When MSNBC announced on Monday that it was being renamed MS NOW, some of the cable network’s biggest stars expressed their support.
“It looks very sporty,” Joe Scarborough said on air as he announced the brand change, which includes a new logo. A graphic showed a striped flag and five capital letters: MS NOW, for My Source News Opinion World.
Outside the network, the rebrand immediately became a subject of bemusement and mockery.
A political strategist in Milwaukee, Gabriella Suliga, wrote that the red, white and blue design “looks like something you’d scroll past in a pile of political campaign logos from 2004.”
“Multiple sclerosis now. Is this some kind of new show?” said Rob Archer, who has worked as a news anchor in Los Angeles, playing on the chronic neurological disorder commonly abbreviated to M.S.
Some conservatives gave the left-leaning network their own name: “Most Surely No One Watching.” (MSNBC lags far behind Fox News in ratings, drawing 865,000 average prime-time viewers in July, according to Nielsen.)
MSNBC began in 1996 as a joint venture between the National Broadcasting Company, NBC, and Microsoft. Microsoft eventually sold its stake in the venture, but its abbreviation remained in the MSNBC brand.
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