Who’d have thought MS would outlast NBC? Except it’s not the MS it once was.
A plan to rebrand the MSNBC cable channel to “MS NOW,” announced Monday, is the latest twist in a corporate media saga that started nearly three decades ago, when Microsoft and NBC launched a joint venture that combined the tech giant’s internet ambitions with the TV network’s news pedigree.
Microsoft cut ties long ago. It dropped its stake in the MSNBC cable channel to 18% in 2005 and fully exited two years later, when NBC acquired the remaining shares. It divested from the online side in 2012, although MSNBC.com — later NBCNews.com — still operated a newsroom in the Seattle region for a while after that.
Despite the split, the MS in MSNBC has lingered as a reminder of that 1996 partnership — and it will continue to live on in the new name, albeit with a different meaning. “MS NOW” stands for “My Source for News, Opinion and the World.”
The rebrand results from MSNBC’s spinoff from NBCUniversal, part of a $7 billion restructuring of Comcast’s cable assets. It’s meant to eliminate confusion with NBC News and give the cable network a distinct identity as it enters its next phase under Versant, the new umbrella for former NBCU cable networks.
In the meantime, Microsoft has taken a different path in media. The company’s Search and News Advertising business — including Bing, Microsoft Start, and integrations with its Edge browser and Copilot AI assistant — generated $13.9 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025, nearly 5% of Microsoft’s total revenue of $282 billion.
Of course, that’s not exactly on the scale of Google in search and online ads, and it’s hardly the next Office or Windows in the scheme of Microsoft’s business. But even without a stake in a major media brand, the company has found its own place in the behind-the-scenes infrastructure for digital news and information.
And we’ve still got that MS as a reminder of the past — for NOW, at least.
