For however many years now, I’ve always lumped MSNBC and NBC News as one entity. Earlier this year, amidst continued dwindling numbers for MSNBC, NBC News President Phil Griffin said that MSNBC is not a news network. Rather than being a news channel that covers extensive breaking news, as has always been the case previously, they now wanted to be deemed as a (progressive) political channel. Comparing them to CNN or Fox News Channel would be like comparing apples to oranges.
Somewhat of a weak argument since MSNBC continued to cover breaking news this summer when warranted (i.e. the Oklahoma tornado outbreak earlier this spring being a prime example).
One of the attempts at fixing the brand confusion was to separate MSNBC.com from NBCNews.com. All news-news was under the MSNBC.com umbrella. No more, earlier this year NBCNews.com became a standalone website while MSNBC.com continues to be repackaged to soon be a standalone website for the cable channel as well as additional progressive content.
Attempt to go to MSNBC.com and you’ll either be redirected to NBCNews.com or you’ll see the image below — which is a prompt to remind you that a new MSNBC website is coming soon. This prompt has been in use practically all summer and now into autumn.
Does it really take that long to build a new website (even when done so correctly)?
The screen shot below is a more clear preview of what the new MSNBC will supposedly look like.
In my opinion, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC are all “news” networks which extensively cover politics. CNN attempts to be more neutral, while Fox is undeniably conservative while MSNBC is undeniably liberal. I don’t know what’s so hard to understand about that.
UPDATE at 10 a.m. — This morning Politico’s Dylan Byers tweeted a link to a preview of the new MSNBC website.
New MSNBC[dot]com http://t.co/Y2fQnjUStN
— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) October 15, 2013