Outlet profile

MSNBC

U.S. left / center-left (progressive opinion-driven)

Owned byVersant Media Group, a publicly traded company (Nasdaq: VSNT) spun off from Comcast/NBCUniversal on January 2, 2026. Comcast shareholders received Versant's stock. Versant's CEO is Mark Lazarus, and Rebecca Kutler is president of MS NOW.

FundingCable and satellite carriage fees paid by distributors, plus advertising. Digital and streaming revenue is smaller. Versant is funded as a public company through shareholder equity and its own debt.

On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

MSNBC launched in July 1996 as a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC, and Microsoft later exited the partnership. NBC, later NBCUniversal, ran the network, and Comcast took control of NBCUniversal in 2011 and 2013. It began as a general news channel and moved toward opinion programming in the 2000s, then took a clearly liberal tilt, with hosts such as Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell. Daytime hours stayed closer to conventional news reporting, while evening hours became progressive commentary. The network has faced criticism from conservatives for partisanship and from some on the left for being too close to the Democratic establishment, and it has had host controversies and corrections over the years. In 2025 Comcast announced the spin-off of most of its cable channels into Versant, and the network rebranded as MS NOW ("My Source for News, Opinion and the World") on November 15, 2025, moving to new studios at 229 West 43rd Street. The spin-off was completed on January 2, 2026, which made the network editorially separate from NBC News. Its current coverage of the Trump administration remains largely critical, though it keeps some straight news reporting alongside opinion.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-10-19; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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