The Rebranding That Got MSNBC To Where It Is Today

MSNBC is a cable and satellite news channel that began as a joint business venture between NBC Universal and Microsoft. However, this soon changed in 2005 when NBC Universal obtained an extra thirty two percent shares from Microsoft. Seven years later, NBC further obtained the remaining eighteen percent from Microsoft, making it the sole proprietor of MSNBC, in charge of all the backdoor decisions made.

Beginnings

Since 2005, MSNBC has been believed to lean towards the left, with more liberal and dynamic perspectives being aired on the channel, uniquely by Keith Olbermann who started scrutinizing the news channel, Fox News and one of its most renowned presenters, Bill O’Reilly. This pulled in a considerable measure of liberal watchers to the channel.

Olbermann remained as the predominately leftist presenter on the news network, in spite of the multiple rebranding that the channel went through. He continued to present his show until 2012, when he suddenly resigned from MSNBC. The channel immediately lost a significant part of the dynamic crowd that tuned in to him. However, to this day, it refuses to give any explanation behind his resignation. Keith Olbermann has since moved his show to another cable news channel, Current TV.

Rebranding

The news channel has gone through two major rebrandings so far.

The first one was in 2007,  when the channel experienced a noteworthy redesign in a great deal of its prime time shows. Its whole schedule was changed and many celebrated shows were scratched off. This move is seen, by a few, to be MSNBC’s method of recalibrating its political campus, going from a leftist news channel to a center, progressive one. However, by this time the damage was done and MSNBC is still seen as a left leaning news channel.

The second rebranding came in 2015.

In 2010, MSNBC started to go up against the CNN to beat them for viewership and socioeconomics. After effectively doing as such, MSNBC next focused Fox News to break its watcher unwaveringness. The campaign went on for a long time and MSNBC burned through $2 million in promotion. However, this wasn’t completely fruitful and MSNBC discovered that they couldn’t beat Fox News. In fact, the channel began to struggle so much that in 2014, they came behind CNN (who they had already beaten) in terms of viewership.

From that point onward, MSNBC again experienced a restoration and this time it returned as a left-inclining, hard news channel. It fell into line with NBC Universal’s NBC News. The channel was patched up yet again and this time, MSNBC Live was made the sole focus of the channel; it now commands more than eight hours of programming daily. It is partly due to this new format that MSNBC has started to recover as a news channel. Finally, in 2017, MSNBC became the highest rated cable news network in America, toppling over its long time competitor, Fox News.