MSNBC to Change Its Name to MS NOW

Media|Goodbye, MSNBC. Hello, MS NOW.

For three decades, news and progressive opinion on the cable dial has been defined by five capital letters: MSNBC. By the end of this year, a couple of those letters are changing.

As part of a corporate spinoff from Comcast, MSNBC is changing its name to My Source News Opinion World, or MS NOW for short. The name is meant to reflect the channel’s mission to provide “breaking news and best-in-class opinion journalism,” Rebecca Kutler, MSNBC’s president, said in a memo to employees on Monday.

“I want to acknowledge that for many of you who have spent years or decades here, it is hard to imagine the network by any other name,” Ms. Kutler said. “This was not a decision that was made quickly or without significant debate.”

Most of the cable channels that were part of Comcast’s NBCUniversal TV empire are being spun out this year into a new company called Versant. The spinoff will require the new company to stop using the NBC brand and its signature Peacock, which are both staying with Comcast, said Mark Lazarus, chief executive of Versant.

Adam Miller, the chief operating officer at NBCUniversal, said in a memo to employees Monday that the change would help avoid confusion between viewers of NBC News and MSNBC as the two channels covered the same news events.

Since the split was announced a few months ago, MSNBC has gone on a hiring spree, adding at least three dozen journalists as the organization prepares to separate itself from the sizable news-gathering prowess of NBC News, its longtime corporate cousin.

MSNBC’s original name is a throwback to MSN, the internet service that Microsoft developed in the 1990s. In 1996, as the business world was frothing over the possibilities for infusing traditional TV businesses with the internet, Microsoft and NBC created MSNBC as part of a joint cable and online venture. Executives had considered changing the name of its website after NBC’s break with Microsoft, but the name persisted.

Ms. Kutler said in her memo that the rebrand would not change MSNBC’s core identity or its editorial focus, adding that the network would mount a major marketing campaign to promote the rebrand.

“While our name will be changing, who we are and what we do will not,” Ms. Kutler said. “Our commitment to our work and our audiences will not waiver from what the brand promise has been for three decades.”