MSNBC

MSNBC

Country	United States
Broadcast area	United States and Canada
Headquarters	30 Rockefeller Plaza Manhattan, New York City
Programming
Language(s)	English
Picture format	1080i HDTV (downscaled to letterboxed 480i for the SDTV feed)
Ownership
Owner	NBCUniversal (Comcast)
Parent	NBCUniversal News Group
Sister channels	CNBC CNBC World NBC
History
Launched	July 15, 1996 (1996-07-15)
Replaced	America's Talking (1994–1996) MSNBC Canada (in Canada)
Links
Website	www.msnbc.com
Availability
Terrestrial
Digital terrestrial television	Channel 20.4 (Alexandria, Minnesota)
Streaming media
Service(s)	Hulu + Live TV, Sling TV, FuboTV, YouTube TV

MSNBC is an American cable news channel owned by the NBCUniversal News Group division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. Launched on July 15, 1996, and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, the channel primarily broadcasts rolling news coverage and liberal-leaning political commentary.

MSNBC was originally established as part of a joint venture between NBC News and Microsoft (with its name being a portmanteau of MSN and NBC), encompassing the channel and the news website MSNBC.com. Microsoft would divest its stake in the channel in 2005, followed by the website in 2012; the website was then rebranded as NBCNews.com to associate it more closely with the NBC News division, leaving MSNBC.com to become a website for the channel and its opinion content.

MSNBC initially focused on rolling news coverage, including long-form reports, interactive programs, and stories contributed by the local news departments of NBC's affiliates. By the late-2000s, MSNBC shifted to primarily airing opinion-based programming featuring liberal commentators such as Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, David Gregory, Ed Schultz, and Rachel Maddow; in 2010, MSNBC would beat CNN in primetime and overall viewership for the first time since 2001. In the mid-2010s, amid a decline in viewership, MSNBC increased its focus on hard news coverage, and added programs incorporating NBC News personalities. Under new leadership in the 2020s, MSNBC began to gradually decrease its reliance on NBC News personalities and resources (especially amid the upcoming spin-off of NBCUniversal's cable networks as a new company), and gradually expanded its opinion programming in dayparts such as the morning and weekends.

In the first quarter of 2025, MSNBC was the second most-watched cable news network, averaging 593,000 total day viewers, behind rival Fox News, which averaged 1.919 million viewers, and ahead of CNN, which averaged 428,000 viewers. In the key A24-54 demo, MSNBC averaged 57,000 total day demo viewers, behind rival networks Fox News, which averaged 247,000 demo viewers, and CNN, which averaged 79,000 demo viewers. In that same quarter, MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show was the only non-Fox News show to appear in the quarter's top 15 cable news programs, both by total viewers and by the A24-54 demo.^[1]