MSNBC to change name to 'MS NOW' in Comcast spinoff deal
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Monday that the left-leaning network's new name will be "My Source News Opinion World," or MS NOW.
CNBC, USA, Oxygen and E! are also included in the Comcast spin-off.
CNBC is going to keep its name, according to the WSJ, but is working on a new logo. The move is part of the networks' attempt to separate themselves from NBC, the Journal reported.
Cesar Conde will continue leading the NBCUniversal News Group, but now that group only includes NBC News, the NBC News Now streaming service, Telemundo and owned-and-operated local stations.
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NBC, Bravo and Peacock (NBC's streaming service) will remain under NBC Universal.
"Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ: CMCSA) today announced its intent to create a new publicly traded company comprised of a strong portfolio of NBCUniversal's cable television networks, including USA Network, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen, E!, SYFY and Golf Channel along with complementary digital assets including Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow and Sports Engine, through a tax-free spin-off. The well-capitalized independent company ("SpinCo") will have significant scale as a pure-play set of assets anchored by leading news, sports and entertainment content," a November press release from Comcast read.
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Mark Lazarus, who will serve as the head of the new company, Versant, told the WSJ that they hoped to mitigate "brand confusion" in the spin-off.
Lazarus told the WSJ that MS NOW would still cater to a progressive audience and prioritize "holding the political figures from both parties to account."
"Change requires flexibility, adaptability, and an open mind. This change is good for us," MSNBC's Senior vice president of communications, Richard Hudock wrote in a post on X.
The network's morning show, "Morning Joe" also reacted to the news on Monday.
"What I've said on this show time and time again is you look at the people that are running the company, they're entrepreneurial. Right, like when you have somebody come into your company after working for big corporations and you're talking, you're sitting there and they go, we want you to be entrepreneurial. We want you to come up with new ideas. We want you to push the boundaries. I'm excited about that. So I'm excited about this, too. It's like, what's in a name? Well, whatever you put into the name," co-host Joe Scarborough said.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin, who co-hosts "Squawk Box" on CNBC and frequently appears on MSNBC, said he liked the new name.
"I like this because I think it actually does have the sort of independence and actually gets away in some ways from even the idea of legacy media," Sorkin said.
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow reacted to the name change in a statement to Variety.
"If there was ever a time for us to change our name, this is it — because we're not just separating from NBC News in corporate terms, we're competing with them now. So I think the distinction is going to be good for us," Maddow said. "What NBC doing in its legacy timeslots — the Today Show, Nightly, Meet the Press — is just a world away from the 24/7 totally independent news operation that we're able to stand up now, thanks to the spin-off."Original article source: MSNBC to change name to 'MS NOW' in Comcast spinoff deal
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'YieldStreet aims to unlock the complex alternative investments market for retail investors but failed to disclose glaring red flags it had about the security of the collateral backing this offering,' an SEC official said in a 2023 release accompanying the settlement, for which the company neither denied nor admitted to the agency's findings. Still, the company continued to rack up assets on its platform, in part by ramping up activities in real estate. By 2023, real estate funds made up 26% of all investments on the platform, the largest asset category and well ahead of runners-up such as private credit, Yieldstreet said at the time. Late that year, Yieldstreet announced it had acquired Cadre, a startup co-founded by Jared Kushner that focused on broadening access to commercial real estate. The companies declined to disclose terms of the deal, but Yieldstreet said the combined entities' 'investment value' was nearly $10 billion. In May 2025, Yieldstreet replaced Weisz as CEO with Mitch Caplan, a former E-Trade chief who joined the startup's board in 2021. That's the year the venture firm where Caplan serves as president, Tarsadia Investments, took a stake in Yieldstreet. The company declined to say why Weisz was replaced. In July, Yieldstreet announced a $77 million capital raise, led by Tarsadia Investments. 'Difficult news' Yieldstreet continued to make moves in real estate well after a seismic shift that made the industry far harder to navigate had begun. In early 2022, the Federal Reserve kicked off its most aggressive rate-hiking cycle in decades to combat inflation, turning the economics of many projects from that period upside down. The value of multifamily buildings has dropped 19% since 2022, according to Green Street's commercial property index. Projects that Yieldstreet put its customers into struggled to hit revenue targets amid price competition or had problems filling vacancies or raising rents, and thus began to fall behind on loan payments, according to investor letters. Combined with the use of leverage, or borrowing money that amplifies both risks and returns, Yieldstreet investors suffered complete losses on projects in Nashville, Atlanta and New York's Upper West Side neighborhood, the letters show. 'After exhausting all options to preserve value, YieldStreet determined there was no reasonable path to recovery,' the firm told customers who invested $15 million in the Upper West Side deal. 'We sold our position for $1.' It's unclear if Yieldstreet, which makes money by charging annual management fees of around 2% on invested funds, itself suffered financial losses on the defaults. In at least a half dozen cases, Yieldstreet went to its user base again in 2023 and 2024 to raise rescue funds for troubled deals, telling members that the loans combined the protections of debt with the upside of equity. But if the project was doomed, a bailout loan was, at least in one case, effectively throwing good money after bad. A $3.1 million member loan to help rescue the Nashville project, located at 2010 West End Avenue, was wiped out in just months. 'We are reaching out to share difficult news,' Yieldstreet told investors of the Nashville project and its member loan in May. 'Following multiple restructuring attempts, the property has been sold to Tishman Speyer ... resulting in a complete loss of capital for investors.' In a statement provided in response to CNBC's reporting for this article, Yieldstreet said it has offered 149 real estate deals since inception and has delivered positive returns on 94% of matured investments in the category. 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In the post, Yieldstreet gave the example of the Alterra Apartments, a multifamily project in Tucson, Arizona, where it said rent increases and a contractual cap on interest rates protected it from the Fed hikes. But this year, Yieldstreet told investors in the $23 million deal that the Tucson development was in technical default and headed for a full write-off. 'Mind-boggling' Customers interviewed by CNBC accuse the company of downplaying investment risks and say that its disclosures around performance can be sloppy or misleading. Mark Underhill, a 57-year-old software engineer, said he invested $600,000 across 22 Yieldstreet funds and faces $200,000 in losses on projects that are on watchlist and have never made payouts. 'With any investment, there's a risk of loss,' Underhill said. 'But there's no consideration of these type of gut-punch losses. They talked about how their deals were backed by collateral, and they gave you all these reasons that make you feel there's something left if the deal goes south.' Underhill, who was treated with chemotherapy for multiple myeloma last year and travels the American West in a camper van, said his losses are forcing him to work beyond his expected retirement date. 'The thing that is mind-boggling is, how did they fail so badly on so many deals in so many markets?' Underhill said. The offering sheet for the Upper West Side project said sales prices would have to plunge 35% for Yieldstreet members to see any losses, a worse hit than what New York experienced during the 2008 recession, Klish wrote in his July complaint to the SEC. But the project defaulted even though prices in the area didn't fall by that much, Klish wrote. In another example, while participants in the Nashville deals got letters showing a complete loss, or a -100% return, Yieldstreet's public-facing website listed a 0% internal rate of return, or IRR, giving the false impression that investors got all their capital back. After CNBC asked Yieldstreet for comment on the discrepancy, the website was updated to reflect the -100% return. The company also stopped issuing quarterly portfolio snapshots after early 2023, making it harder for prospective investors to see how Yieldstreet's overall investments are performing. So besides marketing materials, customers are mostly left to rely on the company's disclosures about its performance as a gauge of whether to invest with the startup. Yieldstreet says it updates its metrics quarterly, and its website shows a 7.4% internal rate of return through March 2025 across all investments. That period likely excludes the impact of the Nashville defaults, which were disclosed in May 2025. 'Winter is coming' Yieldstreet's real estate woes threaten to wipe out decades of savings for Louis Litz, a 61-year-old electrical engineer from Ambler, Pennsylvania. Seeking income and stability, Litz put $480,000 into Yieldstreet funds, he said. Three of those projects have defaulted, while seven developments are on watchlist, he said. 'At least half of this stuff is going under,' Litz said. 'I'm 61, so there's no way I can really recover.' Under its new CEO, Caplan, Yieldstreet has decided to pivot away from a business model of mostly offering bespoke investments like the ones that cratered for its real estate customers. This month, Yieldstreet said that it officially became a broker-dealer, allowing it to offer funds from outside asset managers including Goldman Sachs and the Carlyle Group. The plan is to become a distribution platform where 70% of funds are from these established Wall Street giants, Caplan said this month. The move is worlds away from the confidence that Yieldstreet co-founder Weisz had in the company's original model. In the 2020 CNBC interview, Weisz said that he often reminded his staff that 'winter is coming' and to prepare for turbulence. Yieldstreet would protect its customers from losses because of the underlying collateral the firm was investing in: real buildings with tenants in sought-after locations all over the country, Weisz said. 'I'm not here to tell you that Milind and Michael are the world's smartest investors and there's never going to be something that goes wrong,' Weisz said, referencing himself and his co-founder. 'We understand that when winter comes, there will be challenges, but we take comfort in knowing that there's underlying collateral.' 'Anybody could put money out,' Weisz said. 'It's about bringing it back home.'
