The MSNBC.com news site was renamed NBCNews.com, signaling that Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal has cut ties with Microsoft Corp., ending a 16-year partnership.
Microsoft and NBCUniversal had been discussing a deal that would give NBC full ownership of the MSNBC website in May. With yesterday’s move, the service is changing its logos and navigation, Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Sizemore said on the site. By next year, the MSNBC television channel will debut a new Internet site, she said.
“Today we’re taking on a new name — NBCNews.com,” Sizemore wrote.
“While our name is changing, our commitment is not. In fact, in the weeks and months ahead, we’ll be bringing you more of what you love today, and NBCNews.com will stay true to its mandate of delivering the news you need with the innovative spirit you’ve come to expect across all of our digital platforms. Over the years, we’ve won dozens of awards for our digital coverage, but the real reward has been serving you, our audience.
“So while you’ll notice some changes to our logos and navigation, nothing’s going away.
“In fact, there’s more to come: MSNBC TV will launch a new digital home in 2013, as an extension of the MSNBC TV on-air brand, creating in-depth content and a community for the passionate audiences of MSNBC programs. Until then, MSNBC TV’s digital content will continue to be available on this site, right where you’ve always found it.
“We’re more excited than ever for the future of digital news and look forward to many more years of keeping you on the cutting edge.”
Microsoft and NBC started MSNBC in 1996, teaming up to create a 24-hour news channel and companion website. NBC agreed to acquire the news channel in 2005, leaving the Internet portion as a joint venture. The idea now is to bring MSNBC.com under the broadcaster’s umbrella as well, giving it more control over the website and its content.
Comcast, the largest U.S. cable-television provider, acquired NBC Universal last year.
The moves freeing the world’s largest software maker to build its own online news service.
NBC is buying Microsoft’s 50 percent interest in the MSNBC website for an undisclosed amount. The website will move its headquarters from Microsoft’s corporate campus in Redmond, Wash., to NBC News’ longtime home in New York.
The online divorce stemmed from the two partners’ desire to gain greater control over their digital destinies as the Internet becomes an increasingly important part of their businesses.
The inherent constraints of being locked into a joint venture sometimes handcuffed Microsoft and NBC.
Microsoft, in particular, had grown frustrated by contract terms requiring it to exclusively feature MSNBC.com content on its own websites. That exasperation was exacerbated by the MSNBC cable channel’s strategy to counter Fox News Channel’s appeal to conservative viewers by tailoring its programming for an audience with a liberal viewpoint.
The strategy fed a perception that material from MSNBC’s website was politically slanted, too.
“Being limited to MSNBC.com content was problematic to us because we couldn’t have the multiple news sources and the multiple perspectives that our users were telling us that they wanted,” said Bob Visse, general manager of MSN.com.
Now that it has shed those shackles, Microsoft is preparing to launch its own news service this fall. Although he declined to provide many details about the operation, Visse said the news staff will be about the same size as the roughly 100 people who created original content for the MSNBC.com.
By hiring its own news staff to feed material to its websites, Microsoft is embracing the same strategy as the owners of two other major Internet companies, Yahoo Inc. and AOL Inc.
Microsoft has leaned on its lucrative franchise selling personal computer software to pay for massive Internet investments that have rarely paid off, much to the frustration of its shareholders. The software maker initially invested $220 million in the MSNBC joint venture. It’s unclear if Microsoft ended up making any money on the alliance. As a whole, the company’s online operations, which include the Bing search engine and MSN portal, have lost more than $10 billion in the past seven years.
Even as it sets out to compete against NBC News, Microsoft will continue to highlight the top stories from its former partner for the next two years under terms of the split.
NBC News, in turn, believes it will be able to attract more traffic to its stable of websites by forging other partnerships that were off limits when it was tied to Microsoft.
“There is no question that we are going to have more flexibility to make our own decisions,” said Vivian Schiller, NBC News’ chief digital officer. “This is really an amicable breakup. We think competition will make us better.”
MSNBC.com and its affiliated sites ranked as the Internet’s fourth most popular site for general news in the U.S., with nearly 50 million visitors in June, up 5 percent from last year, according to the research firm comScore Inc.
Yahoo’s recently formed alliance with ABC News topped the charts with 81 million visitors, followed by AOL/Huffington Post, and CNN.
As part of its online restructuring, NBC News plans to create a new online destination for the MSNBC cable channel’s personalities next year.
Although it will be based in New York, NBCNews.com will retain a significant staff in the Seattle area, according to Schiller. About 170 of MSNBC.com’s 300 employees worked in the Seattle area.
Microsoft is letting NBCNews.com remain in its Redmond office while it looks for a new location in the area.
(The AP and Bloomberg contributed to this report.)
