MSNBC is an American news-based pay television cable channel based in New York City. It is owned by the NBCUniversal News Group division of NBCUniversal (a subsidiary of Comcast). It provides NBC News coverage as well as its own reporting and political commentary on current events. As of September 2018, approximately 87 million households in the United States (90.7 percent of pay television subscribers) were receiving MSNBC. In 2019, MSNBC ranked second among basic cable networks averaging 1.8 million viewers, behind rival Fox News, averaging 2.5 million viewers.

 

MSNBC and its website were founded in 1996 under a partnership between Microsoft and General Electric's NBC unit, hence the network's naming. Microsoft divested itself of its stakes in the MSNBC channel in 2005 and in msnbc.com in July 2012. The general news site was rebranded as NBCNews.com, and a new msnbc.com was created as the online home of the cable channel. In the late summer of 2015, MSNBC revamped its programming by entering into a dual editorial relationship with its organizational parent NBC News. MSNBC Live, the network's flagship daytime news platform, was expanded to cover over eight hours of the day.