MSNBC in a $20m effort to rebrand itself

Company to become MS NOW on Nov 15

- MICHAEL GRYNBAUM

Rachel Maddow intoning the preamble to the US Constitution. Maya Angelou reciting her poem Human Family. ("We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.") In a new ad campaign that debuted Tuesday, MSNBC will strive to reclaim the idea of patriotism for its left-leaning, Donald Trump-weary audience.

But the first order of business is to make sure those viewers - median age: 72 - keep watching the cable channel after Nov 15, when it sheds its decades-old MSNBC identity and replaces it with a newfangled acronym, MS NOW.

What's the cost of changing two letters and adding a space? About $20 million, according to two people with knowledge of the expected expenditure on a marketing effort that will be splashed across billboards from Times Square to Los Angeles International Airport.

Renaming a television network, particularly one with a fervent fan base like MSNBC, is a feat typically attempted only under duress. MS NOW came about because MSNBC's parent company, Comcast, decided to cleave its NBCUniversal division into two distinct corporations - it's a long story - and executives wanted "to avoid any potential confusion" between the nowseparated NBC News and MSNBC.

"This isn't something that we sought, obviously," Ms Maddow said in an interview, noting that her bosses had originally expected the MSNBC name to stay.

But Ms Maddow said she had eventually come around on having "a hook to reintroduce ourselves to people, to reintroduce ourselves to the country and remind our viewers what it is they like about us."

"I was annoyed," she said. "And now I'm kind of happy about it."