Pressure of Truth
Exposing the spin on all sides of the news.
Outlet profile

MSNBC (Opinion)

U.S. center-left to left (progressive opinion programming)

Owned byVersant Media Group, a publicly traded company (Nasdaq: VSNT). Comcast spun it off from NBCUniversal on January 2, 2026. Versant also owns CNBC, USA Network, Golf Channel, E!, SYFY and Oxygen. MS NOW is no longer part of NBC News, which stayed with Comcast.
FundingCable and satellite carriage fees paid by distributors, plus advertising. It is also building digital and streaming subscription revenue. Versant's public shareholders now fund it through the stock market, and the company carries debt from the spin-off.
On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

MSNBC launched in 1996 as a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC, and Microsoft later exited. NBCUniversal, and then Comcast after 2011, owned it through most of its history. It began as a general news channel and moved toward liberal opinion programming in the mid-2000s. Hosts such as Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and later others defined that identity, which set it against Fox News in the U.S. cable news divide. It has faced criticism from conservatives for partisanship. It has also drawn criticism from some on the left over personnel decisions and a perceived reluctance to cover some topics. It has had on-air controversies and host suspensions, and it has acknowledged errors in individual segments. In 2024 Comcast announced it would spin off most of its cable networks into a new company, Versant. The channel rebranded as MS NOW (My Source News Opinion World) on November 15, 2025, and the spin-off completed on January 2, 2026. The network keeps a separate news division from NBC News, though it still draws on some NBC resources under transitional arrangements. Its opinion hosts are openly progressive and critical of President Trump's second-term policies and conduct, while its straight-news reporting is more conventional.

Sources

  1. MS NOW (Wikipedia)
  2. MSNBC officially rebrands to MS Now: What to know (News10)
  3. Who Owns MSNBC? Versant and the Comcast Spin-Off (LegalClarity)
  4. News network MSNBC to rebrand (IBC)
  5. Comcast Form 10-Q, June 30, 2026 (SEC)

Profile compiled 2026-10-21; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

← Back to track record