Along with Fox News and CNN, MSNBC is one of America’s three largest cable news networks. MSNBC is commonly found to be the most politically liberal between these three news networks. We can also say that MSNBC is the second-most-watched of the three channels, well behind Fox News and just in front of CNN.
If we talk about the most prominent personalities of MSNBC then they are political commentators Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, and Joe Scarborough, as well as political reporter Chuck Todd.
In November 2010, former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann was suspended for making campaign contributions to Democratic candidates. In January 2011, he resigned after an eight-year run with the channel, moving his show to Current TV.
When MSNBC founded there was another website msnbc.com. They maintained separate corporate structures and news operations. In 2012 when Microsoft sold its share in the site, msnbc.com was renamed NBCNews.com, until then the site was corporately separate from the cable channel.
In 2014, MSNBC formed a partnership with the digital news data-mining startup Vocativ to provide taped video segments for one of its shows.
MSNBC improved its programming in the late summer of 2015.
MSNBC decided to enter into a dual editorial relationship with its organizational parent NBC News to sharpen its news image. The daytime news platform, MSNBC live expanded to cover over eight hours of the day. The president and director of day-to-day operations at MSNBC are Phil Griffin. Also, MSNBC launched a 1080i high-definition feed on June 29, 2015.
By September 2018, MSNBC has reached approximately 87 million households in the United States (90.7 percent of pay television subscribers). Also, MSNBC ranked second among basic cable networks averaging 1.8 million viewers in 2019, behind rival Fox News, averaging 2.5 million viewers.
History of MSNBC
On July 15, 1996, MSNBC News Live was launched and Jodi Applegate hosted the first show including news, interviews, and commentary. Stories published by MSNBC were generally longer and more detailed than the stories CNN was running. By airing stories directly from NBC's network affiliates, NBC also highlighted their broadcast connections along with breaking news coverage from the same sources. coming to politics, MSNBC gradually increased its emphasis on that also
In June 2001, Mike Barnicle's MSNBC show got canceled that started in January 2001 because of high production cost. In the same month Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer mentioned that if he had known the difficulty of attracting viewers, he would not have started MSNBC.
In New York City on October 22, 2007, MSNBC and NBC News began broadcasting from their new studios at NBC's 30 Rockefeller Center complex.
MSNBC was established under the partnership between NBC and Microsoft. A Microsoft executive James Kinsella served as president of the online component, MSNBC.com and in the joint venture, represented the company. For a 50 percent share of the cable channel, Microsoft invested $221 million. Later MSNBC and Microsoft shared the cost of a $200 million newsroom in Secaucus, New Jersey, for msnbc.com.
MSNBC had its highest-rated week ever in the wake of the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol in January 2021 exceeding the ratings of Fox News for the first time since 2000.
Ratings
As mentioned above approximately 87 million households in the United States were receiving MSNBC as of September 2018. Amounting to 90.7 percent of pay television subscribers. MSNBC had an average viewership of over 5 million, the highest among three major cable news networks and ahead of CNN, during the MSNBC News Live first night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention.