Versant to rename MSNBC, throw the logos peacocks

MSNBC will change its name at the end of this year and give up Comcast’s Nbcuniversal.

The political news network will be renamed my world’s news source, either MS NOW, Chief Executive Director of Versant Mark Lazar wrote to the internal memo to the employees seen by CNBC.

In January, Lazar told a group of MSNBC staff that network would not change its name. But over the last few months of the transition planning, NBCuniversal leaders have decided that MSNBC must take over a new name, “to speed up the difference between MSNBC and NBC News,” Lazar wrote on Monday.

MSNBC President Rebeca Cutler added to her own note that the employees did not change in the focus of the news group.

“While our name will change, who we are and what we do. Our commitment to our work and our audience will not give up what the brand promises for three decades,” she wrote.

MSNBC is experiencing aggressive hiring about 100 new positions to stand up for NBC News independent. The network has already hired about 40 journalists from CNN, Bloomberg, Politico and other information organizations to create its first in Washington history.

“At this time, the NBCunersal transition decided that our brand requires a new, separate identity,” the Cutler wrote. “Now this decision allows us to set our own course and affirm our independence when we continue to build our own modern news collection operation.”

While MSNBC and NBC News will have duplication in lighting, the CNBC information organization is already quite separate from the NBC news that the executives decided that no need to change the name. In addition, the “NBC” technical terms in “CNBC” never follows from the National Broadcasting Co. Rather, CNBC is transcripted as “Consumer News and Business Channel”.

However, CNBC will also receive a new logo without the famous Peacock NBCuniversal. This will be true for all Versant brands having a peacock in the logo. Sports content on the US network and golf channel will be branded along with USA Sports. GolfNow’s digital companies and Sportsengine will also change their logos.

MSNBC’s name change and new logos will be presented by the end of the year when Versant plans to come out as a publicly trade company.

MSNBC will soon launch a national marketing campaign that accompanies the launch of a new name: “Unlike everything we have done in a recent memory,” Kutler said in her note on Monday.

MSNBC is the second place to view the cable news, an average of 1.2 million prime time viewers to date. The network has 28 anchors on the air, 21 correspondents and journalists and provides more than 120 hours of live programming every week.

Disclosure: Comcast – a parent company NBCuniversal owned by CNBC. Versant will become a new CNBC maternal company on the proposed spinoff.