In a recent promotional video for MSNBC's rebranding to "MS NOW," the network has employed black actors to portray everyday Americans.
This video, which features a civil rights theme, is interspersed with contemplative shots of MSNBC's predominantly white primetime stars. The narration of the Constitution by Rachel Maddow, a white primetime star, seems to be a clumsy attempt by Versant, MSNBC's new parent company, to appeal to the network's significant black audience.
This audience is the largest in cable news, despite the fact that the primetime and morning anchor lineup is predominantly white.
According to The Washington Free Beacon, the promotional video is part of a $20 million marketing campaign aimed at creating brand awareness for MS NOW. The campaign employs archival protest footage, video clips of Martin Luther King Jr., and Maddow's patriotic narration to depict MS NOW as a beacon of racial and social justice.
The video also extensively features black actors, including Alex Mason, Shekaya Sky McCarthy, and Marcel Noel, without identifying them as paid performers. These actors are shown in contemplative poses as Maddow speaks of forming "a more perfect union."
Mason, a seasoned commercial actor, has previously starred in commercials for companies such as ZipRecruiter, KFC, Target, and Intuitive Surgical. McCarthy, according to her IMDB page, is more of a comedic actress, with credits for roles in the YouTube series "Sad-Ass Black Folk" and the Keke Palmer mockumentary-style series "That's The Gag."
Noel, a Canadian, is also an experienced commercial actor, having been featured in ads for Allstate, Saxx, and Prince George, British Columbia's tourism department.
The promotional video also features a black woman in military uniform embracing her child. The Free Beacon was unable to identify these individuals, but they appear to be actors as well.
The promotional video's civil rights theme might have seemed incongruous without the inclusion of black actors, given that MSNBC's primetime talent lineup is predominantly white. Most of the hosts featured in the video, including Lawrence O'Donnell, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Jen Psaki, Chris Hayes, Stephanie Ruhle, Ari Melber, and Nicolle Wallace, are white. Michael Steele and Symone Sanders, cohosts of an early evening show, make a brief appearance that lasts less than a second.
The video also includes a close-up shot of white MSNBC star Stephanie Ruhle, who is shown earnestly taking notes while wearing a flashy ring that appears to boast a large diamond.
Jacob Soboroff, the white son of influential Los Angeles real estate developer and former Los Angeles Police Department commissioner Steve Soboroff, is the only correspondent featured in the ad. Soboroff, an "immigration reporter" who recently moved to MSNBC from NBC News, is shown thoughtfully holding a pen over what appears to be a blank Moleskine-type notebook.
Rachel Maddow, a 52-year-old white woman who until recently was earning $30 million a year to host her show one night per week, is the star of the ad. She reportedly agreed to reduce her salary to a mere $25 million a year for the next three years.
A second ad in the campaign, narrated by the celebrated black poet Maya Angelou, who passed away in 2014, also features Mason, McCarthy, and Noel. In this ad, as Angelou can be heard reading a poem about diversity, Mason is shown with family members, a visibly pregnant McCarthy is shown with a child, and Noel is once again depicted sitting in a diner. This ad, like the "We the People" spot, intercuts shots of black actors with MSNBC's white anchors, along with archival news footage of black protesters.
The network's attempt to showcase black people, racial justice, and civil rights in ads promoting a predominantly white lineup of news stars highlights the discord between MSNBC's marketing strategy and its glaring lack of on-camera diversity.
In a programming shuffle in February, MSNBC fired its most controversial evening host, Joy Reid, who is black, and demoted Alex Wagner, who is half Asian. Maddow criticized these moves on air as racist. Psaki, a white former Biden aide, replaced Wagner in primetime.
Maddow stated in February, "I will tell you that it is unnerving to see that on a network two, count 'em, two non-white hosts in primetime, both of our non-white hosts in primetime are losing their shows. That feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it."
The dismissal of Reid, whose racist remarks made her position untenable, left MSNBC without any weekday show hosted by a solo black anchor. This is despite the fact that MSNBC, with a 20 percent black audience, has often ranked as the most-watched cable channel by African-American viewers in recent years. The racial justice-focused MS NOW rebrand suggests that Versant is eager to cater to its large black audience.
MSNBC did not respond to a request for comment.
The network announced its "MS NOW" rebrand in August as it prepared to spin off from parent company Comcast, which is divesting all of NBCUniversal's cable channels except for Bravo, which was deemed too valuable to lose, as they were dragging down its share price.
When Versant, the spinoff company, was first announced in late 2024, MSNBC stated that it would retain its name. This made sense, as MSNBC, which was founded in 1996 as a partnership between Microsoft and NBC News, was allowed to keep the "MS" in its name when Microsoft divested from the partnership in 2005.
However, in August, MSNBC awkwardly announced that it would be renamed "MS NOW," an acronym for "My Source for News, Opinion and World." The widely mocked name change was reportedly forced by NBC, which did not want its brand tarnished by the fiercely partisan cable network.
CNBC, which is largely apolitical and is also being spun off, is being allowed to keep its name, although it, like MSNBC, must drop NBC's iconic peacock feathers from its logo. The changes will officially take effect on Nov. 15.
The transition to MS NOW was not well received by media insiders. A Variety piece on the change quoted social media users who ridiculed the new branding. One user said of the MS NOW logo, "Looks like it belongs on a discount computer from 1998, not a serious news network," while another wrote, "Sounds like a medical issue."
A Hollywood Reporter piece on the change, titled "Farewell, MSNBC. Hello, 'My Source for News, Opinion, and the World.' Wait, What?" featured similar commentary from editors Erik Hayden and Tony Maglio.
Maglio said, "My first read went something like this: 'Um, what's-that-now?' If you want your own brand just start over. 'MS NOW' to me reads like it's a random Microsoft application I'd uninstall from my PC when storage space got tight."
MSNBC's original name was chosen because the network debuted in 1996 as a joint venture between NBC and Microsoft. At the time, MSNBC was not a liberal opinion channel but rather a 24-hour news channel. When the software giant sold its stake years later, Microsoft agreed to let MSNBC keep the "MS" in its name.
The network's decision to retain the "MS" acronym for its new name, then, puzzled media experts.
Maglio said, "The MS thing is so weird. Microsoft has had exactly zero ties to MSNBC since 2012 (and from the TV channel, since 2005). Back then, you wouldn't want to change a web address or an established channel/brand name. But now, why not?"
The awkwardness of the name change may be what led Versant to authorize the $20 million marketing campaign complete with the paid actors.
According to long-standing broadcast conventions, television "primetime" begins at 8 pm and ends at 11 pm. This would mean that only 1 out of the 15 primetime hours of MSNBC programming per week features black hosts (or any hosts of color). The Steele-Sanders show, which they co-host along with Alicia Menendez, a white Cuban-American, airs for three hours on Mondaysuntil 9 pmand ends at 8 pm the rest of the week.
Black hosts are more prominent on MSNBC's weekend programming, where several of the hosts are black, including Eugene Daniels, Jonathan Capehart, Antonia Hylton, and the Rev. Al Sharpton. MSNBC, like the rest of the television news business, has long been criticized for relegating its black hosts to the lower priority, less desirable weekend shiftwhat in TV news insider jargon is known as "the weekend ghetto."
Login