Rachel Maddow intoning the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Maya Angelou reciting her poem “Human Family.” (“We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”) In a new ad campaign that debuts on Tuesday, MSNBC will strive to reclaim the idea of patriotism for its left-leaning, Trump-weary audience.
But the first order of business is to make sure those viewers — median age: 72 — keep watching the cable channel after Nov. 15, when it sheds its decades-old MSNBC identity and replaces it with a newfangled acronym, MS NOW.
What’s the cost of changing two letters and adding a space? About $20 million, according to two people with knowledge of the expected expenditure on a marketing effort that will be splashed across billboards from Times Square to Los Angeles International Airport.
Renaming a television network, particularly one with a fervent fan base like MSNBC, is a feat typically attempted only under duress. MS NOW came about because MSNBC’s parent company, Comcast, decided to cleave its NBCUniversal division into two distinct corporations — it’s a long story — and executives wanted “to avoid any potential confusion” between the now-separated NBC News and MSNBC.
“This isn’t something that we sought, obviously,” Ms. Maddow said in an interview, noting that her bosses had originally expected the MSNBC name to stay.
But Ms. Maddow said she had eventually come around on having “a hook to reintroduce ourselves to people, to reintroduce ourselves to the country, and remind our viewers what it is they like about us.”
“I was annoyed,” she said. “And now I’m kind of happy about it.”
The dawn of MS NOW comes at something of a crossroads for MSNBC, which turns 30 next year.
Viewership has fallen as liberals dispirited by President Trump’s second term tune out the news: So far this year, MSNBC’s total audience is down 34 percent from 2024, according to Nielsen. In the same period, CNN’s audience fell 21 percent; Fox News rose 18 percent. The channel’s biggest star, Ms. Maddow, hosts only an hour a week.
The channel has also had to recruit dozens of journalists to create its own independent newsroom, now that it is severed from its cousins at NBC News. (That relationship has at times been fraught, with some NBC journalists bristling at the sharply opinionated programs on MSNBC.)
Now viewers have to acclimate to a new corporate name that received some lukewarm early reviews.
Until last week, when informational spots began circulating with the slogan “Same Mission. New Name,” executives believed that a vast majority of their viewers were unaware of the coming name change.
For help, they called in Sibling Rivalry, a Manhattan marketing agency. The team focused on basic constitutional rights to remind unsettled audiences that they are not alone in yearning for a less chaotic America.
One 60-second spot pairs swelling string music with Ms. Maddow reading the opening of the Constitution. Footage of modern-day protesters and turn-of-the-century suffragists are interspersed with MSNBC anchors like Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski; the married morning-show couple appear just as Ms. Maddow says the words “ensure domestic tranquillity.” The new MS NOW logo, a kind of abstracted American flag, appears at the end.
Another ad features Ms. Angelou reciting her poem at the United Nations in 1996 over footage of a diverse Americana of citizens. The ad closes with a tagline: “We the People.”
“When I watch the ads, I feel all the feels of hope, of community, of unity, of what I think about what it means to be an American citizen in this moment,” said the network’s president, Rebecca Kutler.
Another ad in the works will feature Martin Sheen, whose depiction of President Jed Bartlet on “The West Wing” is revered in some liberal circles.
Another emphasis of the ad campaign is continuity: Viewers will be reassured that their favorite hosts will continue to host the same shows in the same time slots. Only the name will change.
On weeknights in prime time, MSNBC still draws twice the total audience of CNN. And its viewers are loyal, watching the network for an average of eight hours a week.
That dedication was on display last month at “MSNBC Live,” a daylong conference for MSNBC superfans at a concert hall in Midtown Manhattan, where tickets for a V.I.P. dinner went for $1,000 apiece.
The host Ari Melber led the predominantly older crowd in an enthusiastic call-and-response: “Do you still believe in facts?” “Yes!” “Do you still believe in independent journalism?” “Yes!” The host Jen Psaki brought up male fragility during a round-table discussion, and one guest assured the crowd that “any male in here is not fragile, because you’re here.”
Joy Dinehart, 79, who lives in the Seattle area, was sipping a small glass of Jameson in an upper tier alongside her husband, Bob, who stood up and applauded when Ms. Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell took the stage.
“Lawrence could run for president and do a really good job, I’m sure,” said Ms. Dinehart. She said she and her husband, who had flown cross-country to attend, watch MSNBC every day “for hours.”
MS NOW went unmentioned at the event.
The acronym stands for “My Source for News, Opinion and the World.” Crucially, it maintains the “MS,” a nickname for the network that originated from its founding in 1996 as a joint venture with Microsoft. (Microsoft fully withdrew in 2012.)
As Ms. Maddow noted: “A lot of people just call us ‘MS’ anyway.”
Michael M. Grynbaum writes about the intersection of media, politics and culture. He has been a media correspondent at The Times since 2016.
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