Inside Rebecca Kutler’s Ambitious MS NOW Experiment

Jacob Soboroff arrived at MSNBC a decade ago with limited experience in television news. Fresh off stints at YouTube and AMC, he joined the cable network as it was pivoting away from an opinionated daytime lineup and showcasing more reported segments. Soboroff’s compelling dispatches from the front lines of the first Trump administration’s family separation policy for undocumented migrants raised his profile and led to spots across MSNBC and NBC News’ shows, including a recurring guest-host gig on the “Today” show.

“I came into MSNBC as a very green reporter in 2015,” Soboroff acknowledged to TheWrap, “and without much experience at all, and I think that that’s why I connected with the audience on big election nights or other live events. Because I was authentically myself.”

It was his enthusiasm and distinctive style that President Rebecca Kutler and her team told Soboroff they were looking for as MSNBC was splitting from NBC News and would emerge as MS NOW. Soboroff said in August that he would leave NBC News to join the upstart cable network, becoming the most high-profile personality to make the leap.

“‘We want you here to be a part of these big nights, to be a part of our high-value coverage and, most importantly, to be yourself, because that’s what our audience connects with,’” Soboroff recalled of Kutler’s pitch. “That was a no-brainer for me, and I think it was a no-brainer for so many other people … the idea that I could come out and do what I’ve always done, but to have more support from the very top down, made it a very, very easy decision.”

The Soboroff coup reflects Kutler’s drive to turn a cable network long seen as the opinionated sibling of NBC News into a standalone newsgathering operation with a progressive edge.

Once its new parent company, Versant, completes its spin-off from Comcast in January after a year of untethering, Kutler will have staffed up MS NOW’s reporting ranks, moved out of NBC’s 30 Rock home into a new Times Square space and completed its name change without a marked shift in ratings — all while battling breast cancer.

MS NOW is standing up on its own, and it’s poised to evolve as the company launches its direct-to-consumer product for next summer as a way of connecting more with its progressive audience. But as MS NOW works to build a sustainable media business, the possibility of another ownership change looms in the background. Speculation has mounted over a potential sale of Versant from the moment Comcast announced last year that its cable networks would be spun off into an independent company — a reflection of the declining state of traditional linear TV.

But such existential questions haven’t deterred Kutler from the task at hand: covering a tumultuous second Trump term with sharp daily reporting and analysis online and on air.

“I love journalism,” she gushed to reporters during an MS NOW launch breakfast in November, where stars like Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Jen Psaki raved about the opportunities for MS NOW in breaking away from NBC News.

“If I think about what the core tenants of MS NOW are going to be, one of them is going to be to be pro-journalism,” she added, “which I think says everything about what our audience is looking for in this moment and says everything about what is necessary in a functioning democracy.”

Marcus Mabry, MS NOW’s senior vice president of content strategy, told TheWrap that Kutler’s “overarching goal is to build us into a true multimedia, multi-platform company that can be a kind of source for community and news and information for a whole progressive ecosystem.”

“We want to build community around progressive and pro-democracy values, no question,” Mabry added.

MS NOW declined to make Kutler available for an interview. But TheWrap spoke to several MS NOW anchors, executives and staffers, and a picture emerged of a news producer-turned-network president known for her quick decision-making and forward-thinking approach to how the television news organization can evolve beyond its traditional cable confines.

Some acknowledged her bluntness could rankle staffers, but many welcomed her approach to building out a network that, a year ago, wasn’t expected to be a source for breaking news but has since revealed a bribery sting operation involving border czar Tom Homan and broken multiple stories on the Department of Justice and the FBI, among other exclusives.

Stephanie Ruhle, host of “The 11th Hour,” said it “feels like we’re doing this important thing, and we’re doing it together, not as bifurcated shows in a building where there’s NBC and MSNBC,” as well as streaming platform NBC News NOW and “a little Telemundo thrown in.”

“Now, we’re all in this boat,” Ruhle said, “and we’re rolling together.”

Change happens fast

After former President Rashida Jones left the network in January, Versant CEO Mark Lazarus appointed Kutler, then-head of content strategy, to become interim president. She took over the role permanently on Feb. 12, and hit the gas.

Kutler canceled Joy Reid’s show “The ReidOut,” replacing it with the hosts of “The Weekend,” and shuffled some of its other primetime and weekend lineups. Gone were dedicated shows for correspondent Alex Wagner or weekend host Ayman Mohyeldin, replaced by Jen Psaki at 9 p.m. and a three-person panel of hosts (which Mohyeldin sits on).

The decisions prompted some blowback, particularly due to Reid’s prominence within the network and the loss of shows hosted by people of color. Reid did not respond to a request for comment, but she expressed a mixture of “anger, rage, disappointment, hurt” and “guilt” in the immediate aftermath of her show’s cancellation.

MS executives said the changes at the beginning of the year reflected the hard choices Kutler had to execute as she made her mark on the network. Nearly every person who spoke to TheWrap characterized Kutler as a “decisive” leader who recognizes the need to adapt when planning for the future. (Not that everyone may be comfortable with her steadfast approach, as one staffer acknowledged to TheWrap that Kutler’s directness can rub some the wrong way.)

“Change is difficult for people, especially at an organization like this with a lot of experienced people, and I think it can be very hard to manage through that,” one MS NOW executive told TheWrap. “And the level of change that’s happened here is like nothing I’ve ever experienced.”

MS NOW remains behind CNN and Fox News in the advertiser-coveted 25-54 age demographic, though its demo and total viewer averages grew following the Nov. 15 switch from MSNBC to MS NOW. It has also closed some of its demographic gap with CNN this year, and MS NOW leads the latter in total viewers, though Fox News still stands at the top of the pack.  

While cable ratings are still the most important metric of success in television, Kutler must also think about MS NOW’s future in a post-linear world, from the web to podcasts to new products for its most devoted fans.

Startup hiring spree

In a way, MS NOW is a legacy network — originally launched nearly three decades ago as a partnership between Microsoft and NBC — as well as a startup.

For years, MSNBC mostly relied on NBC News’ legion of correspondents to fill its daytime hours with reports on breaking news and politics before it pivoted to hours of opinion programs in primetime. But its split from Comcast meant that it would lose its access to NBC News’ resources, requiring it to flesh out its own ranks.

MS NOW was something of an outlier in the media business in 2025, as they were adding rather than subtracting staff. Already an MSNBC contributor, Politico’s Eugene Daniels joined the network full-time to host “The Weekend” alongside Jonathan Capehart and former Washington Post reporter Jackie Alemany. Pulitzer Prize winner Carol Leonnig left the Post to join NBC News’ Ken Dilanian at the network to produce a string of scoops on the Trump administration’s law enforcement efforts.

NBC News veterans Vaughn Hillyard, Brandy Zadrozny and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Rohde also joined the network, among many others. (Some, such as election guru Steve Kornacki, stayed at NBC News, while Willie Geist was granted an exception to split his time between “Sunday Today” and “Morning Joe.”)

The network also struck deals with the U.K.’s Sky News to boost its international reporting and AccuWeather to provide some weather coverage. Kutler also told TheWrap in November, after a breakfast attended by media reporters, that she still wants to add more talent and has looked at independent and Substack-based creators as potential candidates.

“There is no place I don’t look for ideas,” she said. “I am a ferocious consumer of content.”

‘She’s always been multiplatform’

Kutler’s top priority since she took over the network, staffers say, has been to build out its digital presence and expand further into live events. That’s meant turning a website most known for housing opinions and clips of its various shows into one where audiences can find an array of scoops, op-eds and a suite of newsletters and podcasts.

“She’s been really, really proactive, and again, very optimistic and positive in thinking about how do we exploit, how do we distribute our journalism across every platform,” Mabry told TheWrap. “She’s always been multiplatform. She’s never been just about television, which, again, for a network president, is not always the case.”

The network launched multiple new podcasts this year, including “The Best People with Nicolle Wallace” and a second season of Psaki’s “The Blueprint.” It also expanded its “Morning Joe” franchise with an afternoon newsletter, “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe,” written by “Morning Joe” namesake Joe Scarborough. The network also projects to have nearly 3.7 billion views on YouTube by the end of the year, more than those of NBC News, CBS News and ABC News combined. 

Kutler also revealed during a Versant investor conference this month that it would offer a direct-to-consumer service next year, calling the planned product “a membership community” for its fervent audience. It also plans to continue with its “LIVE” event series for its fans, which drew an audience from throughout the country to New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom in October.

MS NOW’s future

Upon taking control of the spun-off company last year, Versant CEO Lazarus reportedly told people he wanted the progressive network to give Republicans a fair shake, and one staffer acknowledged an apparent desire from executives above Kutler to incorporate a balance of perspectives from all sides of the political aisle. (Lazarus later affirmed to Semafor in September that MS NOW serves a “progressive audience.”)

Even if left-leaning, management has tried to maintain a certain level of discourse when covering the right. Following the assassination of conservative youth activist Charlie Kirk, MS analyst Matthew Dowd told anchor Katy Tur that “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions,” such as Kirk’s death. Kutler fired him within hours, calling his words “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable.”

“There is no place for violence in America, political or otherwise,” Kutler said in a public statement. Dowd later told Katie Couric that his comments were “misconstrued,” but that “it didn’t matter” to the network.

“She’s had to make some really tough decisions this year,” a second MS NOW executive said about the incident.

Staff appear to respect Kutler’s bullishness on MS NOW’s future. Some of that is due to how she’s managed the network’s move toward independence amid her own battle with breast cancer, which she disclosed in October. The manner in which she’s addressed her own health issues may have helped humanize her with staff, they say. Others attribute Kutler’s success internally with her accessibility and openness to ideas. 

“She’s kind of a producer’s producer,” Psaki told TheWrap. “She’s diving into what’s in the ‘C,’ in the ‘D’ blocks, what works and what doesn’t work, and always being on the front edge of news or delivering that storytelling to the audience. But she also is very eyes wide open about the importance of broadening the media landscape and broadening what you’re doing as a network.”

This was most apparent at the company’s Dec. 12 New York launch event for MS NOW staffers at New York’s Tribeca 360, where Kutler thanked them for helping build up the newsroom throughout the year.

“Her whole point was basically, ‘We did this for you, and we couldn’t have done this without you,’” the first MS NOW executive said. “I haven’t been in a room and a work situation in which the level of positive energy was like that in a long time.”

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