MSNBC is an American, English-language television channel that is headquartered in New York City. The current owner of the MSNBC channel is NBC Universal’s NBC Universal News Group division. In addition to providing news coverage of NBC, the MSNBC channel offers news reports and political discussions on current affairs.
Founded in the year 1996, MSNBC and its website, msnbc.com, were the result of a partnership between the NBC Unit of General Motors and Microsoft.
While the website had its headquarters on the Microsoft campus in Redmond in Washington, the MSNBC channel ran its operations from NBC’s headquarters in NYC.
Microsoft sold its stake in the MSNBC channel in the year 2005 and from the channel website in July 2012. NBC took over Microsoft’s stake in the channel website.
Thereafter, the MSNBC website underwent a rebranding exercise to become NBCNews.com, serving as the online home of the MSNBC channel. The website contains opinion columns and videos from MSNBC news programs.
The year 2015 saw the MSNBC channel revamp its programs. The channel entered into a dual editorial partnership with NBC News, which is its parent company to improve its news content.
The President and Director of Operations of the MSNBC channel is Phil Griffin.
During September 2018, the MSNBC channel was reaching about 87 million households in the US. Also, in the year 2019, the channel stood at second place among basic cable networks, with an average of 1.8 million viewers. The MSNBC channel was only behind Fox News that had an average of 2.5 million subscribers.