MSNBC recently decided to rebrand and changed its name to MS Now which sounds like a fundraiser for a disease or the old portal for Microsoft.
Did the ratings improve? Not so much.
Fox News is ending the year on a high note, scoring its best ratings ever in a non-election year while giving primetime broadcast networks a run for their money.
According to Nielsen Media Research, released on Monday (December 15), Fox News averaged 2.72 million primetime viewers and 287,000 viewers in the key Adults 25-54 demo in 2025. This was up 14 per cent in total viewers and 18 per cent in the demo compared to 2024.
In comparison, MSNBC (now MS NOW) averaged 923,000 total viewers (down 25 per cent on 2024) and 81,000 demo viewers (down 39 per cent), and CNN averaged 580,000 total viewers (down 15 per cent) and 105,000 demo viewers (down 29 per cent).
The only thing that can be said for MS Now is that it’s doing better than CNN in overall viewers, but it managed to do worse than CNN in the demo in a country where young people tend to be more leftist than their elders.
MS Now lost 25% of its overall viewers in one year and 39% of its younger viewers.
At this rate, I don’t know how much longer it’s going to last.
Comcast jettisoned the NBC properties it used to want so badly (badly enough to make Al Sharpton a broadcaster) and spun them into something called Versant. The name will probably change to something less horrible, but who knows. Much as CNN will spun off into a channel package by what used to be Warner Brothers. (Netflix doesn’t want CNN or any of the rest of its dying cable rivals.) This is a nicer way of sending them off to a farm while trying to make some cash before the channel packages invariably kill both MS Now and CNN. But I suspect CNN will last longer because MS Now is becoming completely unviable.
