Did you know MSNBC and MSNBC.com are separate businesses? Yep! MSNBC is the network that was launched as a joint project between NBC and Microsoft in the channel space formerly occupied by the America's Talking network. MSNBC.com was the companion website that was the news portal for both NBC News and the Microsoft Network. Microsoft had many of these partnerships. (I remember one between Microsoft and Black Entertainment Television with the website MSBET.com ) Not many of these remain. The only other one I can think of is NineMSN.com between MS and Australia's Nine Network. Anyway, MSNBC and MSNBC.com developed separately as NBC bought out more and more of Microsoft's stake in the television network (MS holds just an 18% stake in the network), while MSNBC.com remained a 50-50 partnership. MSNBC.com has its own news department and web staff (separate from the cable channel) and it actually owns various properties like Newsvine and Everyblock.
The situation can be explained by what their slogans (yes, plural) are. MSNBC's slogan at present is "The Place for Politics". However, they are going to change it to "Lean Forward", which supposedly means they're going to embrace its liberal opinion slant. MSNBC.com's slogan is "A Fuller Spectrum of News" which is only known by the members of the TV or Not TV discussion group. (http://goo.gl/ASUz ). MSNBC.com may fear being tagged as liberally biased, which may explain why MSNBC.com is floating a name change/divorce from the network. http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/memo-hints-at-name-change-f or-msnbc-com/ -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
