Cable news channel rebrandings are about as rare as Halley’s Comet. So when MSNBC announced earlier this week that it would be changing its name to MS NOW — an acronym standing for “My Source for News, Opinion, and the World” — reactions were swift. And almost universally negative.
Some of the criticisms were based on party lines, with conservative commenters lobbing insults about how President Donald Trump had “ended” MSNBC.
Others argued that the new logo appears to look like “PMS” due to the icon in the logo’s placement.
Syracuse University professor of broadcast journalism Les Rose — a former CBS News employee of more than 30 years — took a different issue with the rebrand from MSNBC to MS NOW.
“I thought this was the best example of AI being used when it really shouldn’t have been,” said Rose. “It actually sounds like a word cloud when you think about it. Instead of artificial intelligence, they should have used actual intelligence.”
Rose’s point of contention with the rebrand comes with one of the words used in the acronym for “NOW,” opinion.
“Every older person I see, and I’m probably one of them, says, ‘Can’t you just quit giving me your opinion?Please just give me the news.’ You can be sitting next to someone on a plane, and they figure out what you do for a living, and then you go, ‘Just give me the news.’ I think it harkens back to the (Walter) Cronkite era,” Rose said. “He was the most trusted man in America at the time, and just gave the news on CBS.
“Now, (MSNBC/MS NOW is) including the word opinion in the very name of their news organization. No. That just that’s not a good thing,” he continued. “That one boggles my mind … Why in hell would a journalist consider themselves an instant expert? It puts us one step closer to journalists being called influencers, which really drives me crazy.”
Rose added that Cronkite — who many still view as the gold standard of unbiased television journalists — “gave his opinion only once, and it helped end the Vietnam War.
“We don’t care about your opinion,” he concluded.
The name change for MSNBC came after NBCUniversal reportedly renegged on an agreement to allow the network to continue utilizing the “NBC” and “Peacock” logo in its branding. Rose noted that there have been other instances in history when a brand name has gone through trials and tribulations, but has held firm to the already established brand and was able to weather the storm.
“I did do some quick research on times when a company has huge problems that they went through it and they still didn’t rename their product,” said Rose. “Tylenol, for example, kept its name even after seven people perished. Market share plummeted from 35% to about 8%, according to a New York Times article. But yet, Tylenol, to this day, is still on the market.
“Subway had a spokesman for 15 years named Jared Fogel, and he turned out to be a sex offender, and it’s still called Subway. The brand is all you have. It’s like changing your personal name. You’d better have a really good reason for it.”
No firm timetable for when the brand switch will officially take place was given by the network. It only shared that the transition would take place “by the end of the year.”
In the meantime, due to contractual obligations, CNBC will remain with its current and longtime branding, and will not feature a shift similar to that of MSNBC. The peacock logo, however, will be removed from the CNBC logo.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
