Cable News Giant Pivots to New gTLD After Premium .com Remains Out of Reach
MSNBC completed its transformation into MS NOW on November 15, 2025, launching a redesigned website at ms.now and shedding the last visual traces of its NBC partnership. The rebrand marks the cable news network’s shift toward independence as parent company Comcast spins off its cable properties into a new entity called Versant—but the domain choice reveals how even a major media brand can be caught without the digital real estate it needs.
The Domain Problem
MS NOW couldn’t secure msnow.com, the obvious match for its new brand. The domain has been parked since 2001 by a registrant in Gyeonggi, South Korea, displaying a single page about “Motorized Snow vehicles (SnowMobile)” with explanatory text in Korean. It’s never been properly utilized for any business purpose, yet it remained out of reach for a network valued in the billions.
The alternative domain ms-now.com? Also taken—it redirects to Marley Spoon, a meal delivery service affiliated with Martha Stewart. That left MS NOW shopping for alternatives at exactly the moment it needed to establish independent digital infrastructure.
The network landed on ms.now, using the .now extension that went on sale through Amazon Registry Services in August 2024. It’s a new gTLD with virtually no market penetration, but it offered what msnow.com couldn’t: immediate availability and clean branding that matches the network’s new name.
The Rebrand Context
The name change isn’t voluntary. Comcast’s spinoff of cable networks including MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, and Golf Channel into Versant means severing all ties to NBC branding. NBCUniversal decided to retain exclusive control of the peacock logo, forcing MSNBC to create an entirely new visual identity.
“MS NOW” stands for “My Source for News, Opinion, and the World”—a backronym that maintains the “MS” initials from MSNBC while signaling editorial independence. There’s historical irony here: Microsoft sold its MSNBC stake in 2005 and exited the website partnership in 2012, yet the network kept “MS” branding for another 13 years before finally redefining what those letters mean.
The new site at ms.now strips away the NBC peacock entirely, replacing it with a flag-inspired logo design. Content structure and navigation remain familiar, but the visual refresh represents complete separation from the NBC News infrastructure MS NOW relied on for nearly three decades.
Messy Execution
Industry observers have noted significant missteps in the rollout. MS NOW doesn’t control the @MSNOW handle on X (formerly Twitter) or Instagram—forcing use of @MSNOWNews instead. For a network attempting to establish a clean digital identity, losing the obvious social media handles before launch signals poor planning.
Barrett Media’s analysis was blunt: “It’s as if the network grabbed a new name, slapped it on every surface it could find, and hoped people wouldn’t look too closely at the details. But the details matter.” The publication compared the domain situation to showing up late to a party and “picking through the bargain bin.”
The comparison to HBO Max’s rebrand to “Max” has been unavoidable, with media observers joking about eventual transitions to “MS Go” and “MS Max.” Former MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann noted the “MS NOW” branding could be misinterpreted as targeting women viewers, referencing the National Organization for Women.
The .now Gamble
Using a new gTLD represents a significant bet on changing user behavior. The .now extension has minimal recognition outside tech circles. Users conditioned to type “.com” by default will need retraining. Search engines and social platforms will need to properly index and display the unusual domain format.
MS NOW is essentially asking its audience to adopt a new typing pattern—ms.now instead of msnow.com—at the exact moment it’s trying to maintain viewership during a turbulent rebrand and corporate spinoff. The network can’t afford user confusion or lost traffic from people typing the wrong domain and landing on Korean snowmobile information.
The advantage? Full control and perfect brand alignment. MS NOW owns ms.now outright, avoiding the six-or-seven-figure negotiations that acquiring msnow.com from a domain holder would require. For a network spinning off from its parent company during industry-wide cable decline, avoiding major domain acquisition costs has strategic value.
Broader Infrastructure Changes
The domain is just one piece of a massive operational transformation. MS NOW separated its newsroom from NBC News in October 2025, relocating to interim studios at 229 West 43rd Street (internally nicknamed the “summer camp”). The network signed a distribution deal with Sky News for international reporting coverage, replacing the NBC News correspondents who no longer appear on the channel.
President Rebecca Kutler has been building MS NOW’s independent Washington bureau and pursuing talent from outlets like The Washington Post and Politico. The network canceled several shows, including The ReidOut with Joy Reid, as part of the realignment toward a leaner, more digital-focused operation.
Industry Implications
MS NOW’s domain situation offers lessons for any brand managing digital transitions. Premium .com domains that match your brand name are finite resources. When you need one during a crisis rebrand, the holder has leverage. The alternative—new gTLDs like .now—offer availability but require user education and acceptance.
For domain investors, the MS NOW rebrand demonstrates that even major media brands can be forced into suboptimal domain choices. The owner of msnow.com now holds a domain that a billion-dollar media network needs but couldn’t acquire. Whether MS NOW eventually negotiates for msnow.com or commits fully to ms.now will indicate how seriously they view the .com standard.
The network is betting $20 million on an advertising campaign called “We The People” to drive awareness of the rebrand. Whether audiences accept ms.now or keep trying to type msnow.com will determine if that marketing spend translates to retained viewership or lost traffic to Korean snowmobile pages.
MS NOW launched at ms.now because msnow.com wasn’t available, ms-now.com redirected to meal kits, and acquiring either would require negotiations the network either couldn’t afford or wouldn’t prioritize during a compressed spinoff timeline. The .now extension offers clean branding and immediate availability, but requires audience adoption of an unfamiliar domain format.
For a cable news network fighting streaming competition and declining viewership while separating from its parent brand, the domain choice reveals the constraints of rebranding under pressure. MS NOW got the domain it could get, not necessarily the domain it wanted. Time will tell whether ms.now becomes a successful brand pivot or a cautionary tale about the cost of arriving late to secure your digital real estate.
