Fired MSNBC host Joy Reid has some thoughts on her former network’s upcoming makeover, which includes rebranding to My Source for News Opinion and the World (aka MS NOW).
Appearing on the latest episode of the On with Kara Swisher podcast, Reid touched on MSNBC’s shocking rebrand and how she believes “the new corporate suits” at the network are trying to appease President Donald Trump.
“The logo, the red, white, and blue, is giving a little Newsmax,” Reid said, per The Daily Beast, referencing the right-leaning streaming news channel. “It’s a little America, you know? I feel like they’re like, ‘Will Trump like this?’ I feel like that’s in the minds of all marketing people right now, is ‘Will Trump be mad?’”
The change comes as MSNBC and other Comcast cable networks are set to spin off into a separate company, Versant, led by Mark Lazarus. In addition to the name change, the network will also be getting rid of its iconic Peacock logo.
Explaining the changes earlier this month, Lazarus said in a company-wide memo, “The peacock is synonymous with NBCUniversal, and it is a symbol they have decided to keep within the NBCU family. This gives us the opportunity to chart our own path forward, create distinct brand identities, and establish an independent news organization following the spin.”
Versant
Reid told Swisher she thinks the name change will ultimately be a bad move for the network, as the name has value to “MSNBC fans.”
“[It’s] like The Muppet Show to them. It’s Sesame Street. It is such a brand that is meaningful to people,” she stated, adding, “I don’t know what they’re trying to do… they were willing to keep the Microsoft, but not the NBC, you know, which tells me they’re still using Teams.”
Reid, who was let go from the network in February, did say that she had sympathy for the network’s new bosses. “I kind of feel for the new corporate suits that are running that place,” she said. “They’re under a lot of pressure… Donald Trump is a vengeful, vicious, vindictive man.”
However, if a name change was necessary, Reid said she wished they’d chosen something more appealing. “I guess if I had to pick something… I might have called it something like ‘Blue News,’ you know what I mean?” she shared. “Or something that had the ‘blue’ word in it. Because people who watch MSNBC are on the blue side of the red-blue divide, so it would sort of fit with Bluesky.”