MSNBC began as Microsoft's bet that television and the internet would merge
The cable channel now called MS NOW launched in 1996 as MSNBC, a Microsoft and NBC joint venture whose name fused MSN with NBC. Its early slogan urged viewers to get connected, anchors read out their email addresses, and one tech show featured a computer-animated co-host played by Leo Laporte.
Microsoft paid $221 million for half the cable channel, and the network went on air on July 15, 1996, from studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, with Jodi Applegate anchoring its first show. Its opening stories covered Boris Yeltsin meeting Al Gore, Bob Dole's presidential campaign and the Khobar Towers bombing. Reports ran longer than CNN's, affiliates fed in local stories, and Internight took viewer questions by phone and email. The Site, co-hosted by Soledad O'Brien with Laporte as the animated Dev Null, was cancelled in 1997 after low ratings and repeated interruptions for coverage of Princess Diana's and Mother Teresa's deaths.
Identity proved elusive. Keith Olbermann arrived from ESPN in 1997, grew frustrated when the Lewinsky scandal swallowed his show, and left. A rebrand as America's NewsChannel, with hires spanning Pat Buchanan to Phil Donahue, was followed by falling ratings. Microsoft sold down its stake, with NBC buying 32 percent in 2005 and the rest two years later, and in October 2007 the channel moved into 30 Rockefeller Plaza alongside NBC News.
The turn to liberal opinion came in the late 2000s. Olbermann, back on air, began skewering conservative commentators in 2006 and saw his ratings double; Rachel Maddow's show started in September 2008 and soon beat Larry King Live. In March 2009 MSNBC finished ahead of CNN in primetime for the first time, and in 2010 it passed CNN in overall viewership too. When audiences later slipped, it leaned back toward hard news.
In November 2025, ahead of Comcast spinning off Versant, the channel split from NBCUniversal and renamed itself MS NOW, a backronym for My Source for News, Opinion and the World. It is based at 229 West 43rd Street in Manhattan and ranks second among cable news networks, behind Fox News and ahead of CNN.
Source: MS NOW
