The US’s biggest liberal-leaning network, MS NOW, has seen double-digit viewership gains since rebranding from MSNBC, the company’s CEO claimed on Tuesday.
“Since the rebrand to MS NOW in the fourth quarter, that momentum has not only held, it has accelerated with double-digit growth in total viewers since November,” said Mark Lazarus, CEO of MS NOW parent company, Versant.
The network, home to Morning Joe and the Rachel Maddow Show, had been known as MSNBC since its launch in 1996, and early polling showed concern about the name change among viewers.
Lazarus said that MS NOW’s most passionate viewers watched between eight and nine hours per week, “which is the second highest engagement across the entire media TV landscape”.
Versant, which formed earlier this year after NBCUniversal spun off most of its cable television networks, announced Tuesday that its total revenue for 2025, $6.69bn, would have come in 5.3% lower than the previous year.
The company includes MS NOW, CNBC, the Golf Channel and USA Network among other channels, a group of businesses that have faced industry-wide pressures from cord-cutting. Revenue generated from cable television subscriptions declined by 5.4% from 2024 to 2025, which the company said was a slow and manageable decline compared with more dire predictions.
Revenue from advertising suffered the largest year-over-decline, coming in at $1.58bn compared with $1.73bn in 2024. (The company reported financial results as if it had been operating over the last two years.)
Looking just at the last three months of 2025, Versant’s revenue would have also come in 6.5% lower than the final quarter of 2024.
Overall, the company reported net income attributable to Versant of $930m for 2025.
Versant’s stock price is down about 27% since the beginning of the year, trading at about $33 per share on Tuesday.
Lazarus emphasized the importance of news and sports programming to the company, which he said generates 60% of television viewership – and pronounced himself pleased with the early returns.
“Our live news, live sports and premium entertainment programming continue to attract large, engaged audiences and generate robust advertiser demand,” Lazarus said on a call with investors and financial analysts.
For 2026, the company is expecting advertising tied to the upcoming midterm elections – as well as forthcoming products, including a direct-to-consumer MS NOW service – to help generate revenue between $6.15bn and $6.4bn.
Asked about the pending merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery, which, like NBCUniversal was originally slated to spin off its cable television assets into a separate company, Lazarus said Versant’s strategy was unchanged. “We have our plan to go as an independent company,” he said. “We have a strong set of assets.”
