MS NOW Wants to Turn Its Viewers Into a Fandom
Wired · LC · trust 48/100
Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Even if you’re a casual consumer of MS NOW, formerly MSNBC, you know the names: anchors like Chris Hayes , Stephanie Ruhl, and yes, the one and only Rachel Maddow. The network has built a stable of talent who’ve amassed a massive number of casual viewers, plenty of fans … and more than a few obsessives.
Now, the network’s president, Rebecca Kutler, is looking to build that entire audience into something more akin to a fandom—turning casual viewers and fanatics alike, whether on TV or online, into paying members of an MS NOW media universe.
To do it, she’s launching an ambitious subscription program, called Membership, designed to connect MS NOW consumers much more directly to the Hayeses and Maddows of the world. Sure, plenty of news providers now offer subscriptions, WIRED included (and by the way, you can subscribe here ). But what struck me about Kutler and Co.’s efforts was both their methodical approach—they surveyed 18,000 people before landing on a final offering—and their resolute focus on MS NOW’s deep bench of talent as the locus of their paid program. In a world where influencers are the new newscasters, and linear TV is in an inevitable decline, MS NOW is diving directly into the breach: applying the influencer playbook to build a sustainable business that’s future-proofed … at least until the next great audience pivot.
I caught up with Kutler at WIRED’s New York studios, just days before MS NOW’s subscription launch. We talked about turning TV talent into fandom magnets, beating Fox, and whether media consolidation is actually good news for the network.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
KATIE DRUMMOND: Rebecca, thank you so much for being here today. Start by telling me when you joined MSNBC. What’s the timeline?
REBECCA KUTLER: I think it was right before the midterms in 2022. I had grown up at CNN. I spent more than 20 years there. I left earlier in 2022, and some folks that I knew and really respected reached out from then MSNBC, and they talked about one of those jobs that has a lot of running room and is a little ambiguous, but in the best way. I thought, “Yeah, let's check it out.” I started at MSNBC, now MS NOW, running their digital businesses, basically all their nonlinear businesses.
It gave me a real opportunity to learn the place, but also think about what are the missed opportunities that we could take advantage of in the next few years.
At some point in your tenure, you took on the whole thing.
What were those big challenges that you identified when you looked at the whole portfolio and thought to yourself, “What are we going to do here?”
One of the things that immediately struck me when I came over was the fandom.
I had worked in other newsrooms. I have friends who work in other newsrooms. I love the news and love what we do, but I had never worked at a place where the audience really sees themselves as fans, with a deep connection to talent.
When I joined MS, it was also at the same time Jen Psaki joined, and we had known each other a little from a previous life. So we went out into the field together and did a few pretty straightforward field reporting pieces. And I've walked through airports over my career with a lot of different anchors and newspeople, but I’ve never had the experience of walking through with Jen and seeing the [attention she got]. That's why she was a great fit for MS. She’s someone people were behind and were rooting for, and had a deep connection with.
When you think about Rachel Maddow and how she lands. You’re very close to this industry. If you talk to anyone in publishing and ask them where they would ideally like to debut their book, I think most of them would say The Rachel Maddow Show . There’s a reason for that: The audience loyalty and engagement with Rachel has been proven over decades.
It’s funny, when she shares a WIRED story on social media, the traffic to that story and the engagement on her social media around WIRED is crazy. I can tell you firsthand looking at the analytics, you can feel it.
I want to ask you more about talent in a minute, but that brings me to this Membership program you're launching. I'm going to read from the press release, which I very rarely do. You will offer “new opportunities for members to interact directly with the brand’s trusted journalists, exclusive community features to engage with each other, a new roster of contributors and experts, original creator content, new verticals that explore how news and politics impacts everyday life, and 24/7 access to livestreams and television programming.”
In layman’s terms, if someone’s a MS NOW viewer, they watch it on TV sometimes, they see it on social media, what should they expect from this? What are they getting that they’re not already getting by having cable TV?
I want to answer your question directly, but I just don’t want to assume your audience is the MS NOW audience. So if you'll allow me 30 seconds …
We launched as a new brand about a year ago. People traditionally see us as this cable channel, and that's great. We have a huge cable audience. We're actually right now the number two most-watched basic cable channel.
I see. OK. We might talk more about that later.
But that’s just one piece of our business. We have, right now, a digital business before we even launch what we're launching this week, that has more uniques than places like Axios, Politico, The Atlantic. People spend more time with us digitally than places like the Washington Post and NPR.
And on YouTube, we have been quite efficient at building out our presence in that space. We get more clicks on YouTube than ABC News, NBC News, and CBS News combined.
I say all of that to say we are starting from a position of strength. What we are excited about, and why we're launching this product, is all those digital…
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