NBC Takes Full Ownership of MSNBC Digital Businesses

NEW YORK: NBC News has taken full ownership of the MSNBC Digital Network—encompassing MSNBC.com and several other web properties and apps—buying out Microsoft’s 50-percent stake of a joint venture that was created in 1996.

While NBCU is the sole owner of the MSNBC cable network, MSNBC.com has been part of a JV with Microsoft. With that venture now dissolved, that website, and others, come under a new NBC News Digital umbrella, to be overseen by Vivian Schiller, the senior VP and chief digital officer of NBC News. The current MSNBC.com site has become NBCNews.com. A new digital venture for the left-leaning cable news channel will launch in 2013, serving as an extension of the on-air brand.

“When MSNBC.com launched 16 years ago, it set the standard for how people consume news online—creating trends and leading the marketplace," said Steve Capus, the president of NBC News. "Today, NBC News enters a new phase of its history better positioned to compete and grow in a digital environment, as well as deliver consumers and clients a multiplatform news experience unlike anything else in the industry. We’d like to thank Microsoft for everything they’ve done for this partnership and for helping us build these properties into what they are today.”

Schiller added, “This deal represents so many opportunities for NBC News, including the ability to better align television with digital, innovate around how we deliver content to consumers, and fully integrate digital into everything that we do. Through this new structure, we’ll grow by engaging users with our content directly, and on every platform. This is a different model from the rest, and given where the future of online news is trending, we see it as a model with staying power.”