On Saturday, a new era in cable news will officially begin. After nearly three decades, MSNBC will shed its original name to become MS NOW, launching an independent newsroom under a new parent company as it fully separates itself from NBC News.
The first program to debut under the new MS NOW banner? The network’s weekend morning program appropriately named… The Weekend, which is hosted by Pulitzer Prize winner Jonathan Capehart, senior Washington reporter Eugene Daniels, and Washington reporter Jackie Alemany.
It was also The Weekend where Andrew Cuomo seemingly put the final nail in his New York City electoral hopes, declaring to the world that “diversity can be a weakness” and seemingly mistaking the show’s two Black hosts with one another.
“I’ve never seen anything like that in my years at MS, certainly, where an interview just takes off,” Capehart told The Independent.
And while the pressure of being the first to broadcast the change is palpable, but the hosts appear to be embracing the moment.
“Our show is the first MS NOW show that will air when the turn happens,” Daniels said in an interview with The Independent. “We get to be kind of the first face for the world to see that this is the exact same show that people were watching last weekend. It will be the exact same network. It just has a new name.”
The network’s rebrand is more than just a name change; it represents a significant structural shift. MS NOW is separating from NBCUniversal’s news division to stand up a modern, independent newsroom under Versant, which was formed by NBC’s parent company Comcast as a “spin off” of the bulk of its cable networks and digital assets.
For the journalists staying with the left-leaning cable news network, the transition is seen as a commitment to growth and reporting at a time when much of the industry is struggling. While other broadcast networks and legacy media outlets are contracting and slashing newsrooms, MS NOW is hiring.
“The most exciting thing is in an industry that is under pressure and under siege, depending on your outlook, this is a network that’s growing, right?” noted Capehart. “I mean, everyone else is contracting. And you know, we’re standing up our own newsroom with our own reporters.”
Jackie Alemany echoed the sentiment, framing the move as a hopeful counterpoint to the broader media landscape.
“It’s really exciting to be a part of the evolution, and a part of a positive evolution where we are actually putting resources into real reporting,” she declared. “On the ground reporting, and to empowering journalists, hiring them, supporting them in myriad ways, whereas a lot of our counterparts are, unfortunately, doing the opposite.”
The change to MS NOW — which stands for My Source for News, Opinion and the World — underscores the brand’s promise of breaking news, opinion journalism, and global coverage. Over the last nine months, the organization has aggressively built out its reporting operation, signing deals with Sky News and AccuWeather, and adding more than three dozen on-air journalists, including many Pulitzer, Emmy and Peabody award-winning reporters.
In fact, MS NOW has already added hundreds of roles to its ranks, a rare “bright spot in journalism” amid widespread industry cutbacks. The hosts view this commitment as a core part of their mission, a feeling encapsulated by Daniels’ philosophy.
“You know, I’m a big Beyoncé fan, right? One of the things that she always does is she competes with herself,” Daniels said. “And I think that is something that I’m always thinking about is, like, keep the blinders on, put your nose to the grindstone, do your job, do it to the best of your ability.”
The hosts also stressed that the independence from the old corporate structure creates a stronger firewall, protecting their reporting from outside interests—a crucial element for a healthy news organization. In recent weeks, the network found itself in an awkward position, as Comcast was listed as one of the donors to Trump’s $300 million ballroom amid backlash over the president’s destruction of the White House’s East Wing.
“There’s a lot of frustration with journalism right now,” Daniels acknowledged. But he reminded that “the people actually doing the work, the people making the calls… those people are still doing the job, and what’s happening on the corporate level, there is a wall between us and them.”
Alemany, a former White House reporter for The Washington Post, affirmed this separation. While the Post’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos notoriously blocked the editorial board’s presidential endorsement of Kamala Harris and pushed his paper’s opinion section towards the right, Alemany noted that she’s “never had” a corporate owner “directly interfere” with her work.
“And if that did happen, I probably would no longer work at that organization. There are no signs of that for us at this moment,” she added.
Capehart reinforced the idea that reporting on the organization itself builds credibility, noting that MSNBC anchors and hosts disclosed during their coverage of the East Wing demolition that Comcast was donating to the new ballroom. Capehart recently left the Washington Post after 18 years, saying he felt the opinion section’s new direction didn’t leave “any room for a voice like mine.”
“You can judge the health of a newsroom, I think, by how well they report about themselves when they’re in sticky situations,” he said. “It shows the audience that we are not afraid of the President and we’re not afraid of the parent company. And luckily, you know, we will be on our own.”
Ultimately, the editorial direction remains consistent with the strong, reporting-first approach emphasized by network president Rebecca Kutler. Alemany explained: “We’re also not contorting, which we’ve seen other organizations do under new management. We are all being asked to be exactly who we are and to continue doing exactly what we’ve always done.”
“If there’s one, you know, overarching mantra for us… it’s always been reporting. Lean into your reporting,” Capehart insisted, succinctly stating the driving force for the network.
The transition to the new brand comes as much of the cable news landscape has seen decreased viewership following Trump’s 2024 victory, and MSNBC has not been immune to that erosion. The network is averaging 1.2 million weekday primetime viewers this year, down 29 percent from 2024, which is likely linked to the channel’s largely liberal viewers’ disappointment over a new Trump term.
While it still lags far behind Fox News, which has seen its ratings jump this year amid a new MAGA era, MSNBC is doubling CNN’s primetime viewership, which is also down double digits from last year.
The network has also noted that its audience is up 83 percent in primetime and 70 percent in total-day viewers compared to 2015, despite a significant decline in pay-TV households. Digitally, the brand is also a major force, recording 6.7 billion views year to date across TikTok and YouTube.
MS NOW could be launching the rebrand from a position of strength. MSNBC ran neck-and-neck with Fox News for its Tuesday night primetime election coverage, pulling in nearly 3 million viewers and topping the conservative network in the key 25-54 advertising demographic. All while it no longer had the khaki-clad Steve Kornacki – who decided to remain with NBC News – manning the election board.
Ratings for The Weekend, which re-launched with the current slate of hosts in May, have also been up. The show has grown 40 percent in the 25-54 demo since its debut and is up 13 percent this quarter in total viewers compared to last quarter.
The Weekend itself is already proving its ability to generate headlines. Alemany pointed to their recent interview with then-New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo, which she described as “probably the most consequential pre-election interview that anyone had done.”
The interview gained widespread attention not just for Cuomo declaring that “diversity is our strength, but it can also be a weakness,” but also for confusing Daniels with Capehart as he was pressed on his observation. The remarks from Cuomo, meanwhile, came just days before his electoral loss to Zohran Mamdani, who had accused the former governor of peddling Islamophobia throughout the race.
“The thing that I took from it, and the most interesting was the thing that he was saying while he got us confused, which was like, diversity is a weakness,” Daniels recalled the shocking moment. “And I think voters watching something like that, with or without the name screw up, you’re going to have Democratic voters in New York City have a lot of questions as to how someone can say that.”
Daniels noted that Cuomo “doubled down” when asked to clarify his remarks about diversity, saying “that is what voters saw” and Cuomo was “definitely on his way to the result he got” last Tuesday night.
Capehart – who served as a policy advisor to Michael Bloomberg during the billionaire’s first mayoral campaign in New York City – explained why the comment was so stunning.
“The idea that you would want to run as mayor of New York City, where diversity, the gorgeous mosaic from Dinkins, is in the DNA of New York City,” he stated. “And you go on a show the weekend before the election and say… diversity is a weakness — that candidate never wins in New York City, never.”
The interview’s impact was immediate, with The New York Times reporting on the exchange within an hour of the show’s end, perhaps demonstrating The Weekend’s journalistic clout as it prepares to lead the network into a new era.
