The cable outlet formerly known as MSNBC has been forced into a new identity, shedding ties to NBC and rebranding as MS NOW after a corporate split, and this piece examines how its ratings spin reveals more decline than comeback while keeping the facts and key quotes intact.
MS NOW’s transition away from NBC properties has been public and messy, with studios relocated and staff split between two entities. That separation became permanent when Comcast spun off its cable channels into a new company and the network abandoned the MSNBC name. The move included shifting production out of 30 Rockefeller Center and severing shared resources in Washington, creating a clear operational break.
The network did manage to keep a portion of its audience and even pulled slightly ahead of CNN, which limped into third place during parts of the year. PR teams seized on occasional upticks and declared bright spots, pushing a narrative that audiences had returned to decade-high levels. Those claims, however, rest on selective metrics and narrow windows of time rather than sustained, across-the-board growth.
MS NOW’s public relations playbook leaned into the idea that current primetime audiences were as large as they had been a decade ago, but that assertion relied on a very specific measurement and timeframe. The network emphasized the bold running average line on its charts and asked viewers to ignore the broader trend. The underlying reality in that graphic shows primetime figures lower than most of the past eight years, with any improvement amounting to slowing the bleed rather than reversing it.
When a broadcaster touts a comeback, it’s worth asking which numbers they picked and why. Networks often highlight incremental gains over short intervals while ducking the bigger picture. In MS NOW’s case, the animated ratings graphic it released did more harm than good, because the full visual told the story the press release tried to bury: a steady decline since a 2020 peak.
Since 2020 the trajectory has been mostly downhill, and MS NOW is not the reason viewers flock away from CNN so much as the fact that CNN convinced fewer people to watch over the same period. The competitive landscape matters: this is not a drama of one network’s sudden success so much as a tale of relative failures and floor shifts among cable news channels. MS NOW did not leap to second place; it simply didn’t fall as fast as a competitor on certain nights.
Meanwhile Fox News kept a commanding lead, consistently drawing the largest audiences across top-rated programs. That network maintained 14 of the 15 highest-rated news shows and continued to post ratings on nights when rivals struggled. Even single shows on Fox outperformed multiple primetime MS NOW programs combined on many evenings, underscoring that the market leader remains dominant.
Industry commentators should note that cherry-picking a metric doesn’t change the broader pattern: cord-cutting and shifting viewer habits continue to eat into cable ratings across the board. The midterm cycle and a changing TV ecosystem will make 2026 another tricky year for all the networks. Expect PR departments to battle over soundbites while the underlying audience shifts continue to play out on the real charts.
MS NOW’s animated chart is instructive because it reveals the very problem the network tries to deny. The bold line looks reassuring if you only glance, but the long-term trend line is the honest one. If there’s any cause for modest optimism on that graphic, it’s only that the steepness of the decline has eased, not that the network has mounted a genuine recovery.
The broader takeaway is simple: public relations spin can dress up bad news for a headline, but the full evidence often tells a different story. Networks will always pick metrics that flatter them, and consumers should interpret those claims with a skeptical eye. In a competitive environment where top players keep growing their advantage, talk of miraculous rebounds should be tested against comprehensive, transparent data.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.
Help us continue to expose their left-wing bias by reading news you can trust. Join RedState VIP and use the promo code MERRY74 to get 74% off your membership.
Add comment