• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, Yesterday

If MSNBC’s rebranding to MS NOW is any example, then renaming stuff can be very challenging indeed.

This new name was announced Monday. By the end of the year, MSNBC will be known henceforth as MS NOW without “NBC” in its name.

The new acronym represents MSNBC’s forthcoming divorce from NBCUniversal. Along with every other network in NBCU’s basic-cable portfolio except Bravo, MSNBC will become a part of Versant, the new spin-off company created by NBCU to wall off its legacy cable networks from the rest of the company.

Come to think of it, the meaning of “Versant” is not exactly apparent or accessible to the average person either.

To what does it refer? Is it meant to suggest “versatility”? Does it signify that the company is “well-versed” or “versant” in its field of endeavor? 

In one of my dictionaries, “versant” is defined as an archaic shortening of “conversant.” In another dictionary, “versant” is a noun referring to the slope of a mountain or chain of mountains.

MS NOW stands for My Source News Opinion World. The first time I read this on Monday, I thought it was gibberish and that someone made a mistake. Read it aloud as written here and you might feel the same way.

But on the newly designed MS NOW logo, the words are separated by an “|” (sometimes referred to as a “vertical bar”) to create My Source | News | Opinion | World. Alrighty then.

The problem is, nowhere in the many stories that covered the news on Monday were the words written out that way, which was readily predictable since typing a vertical bar (shift key + forward-slash key) can be physically difficult.

For those of us who write about TV, it is not unlike the chore of typing “M*A*S*H.” It slows down our typing, but we do it because the show is a revered part of TV history.

But MSNBC? Not so much.

Suffice it to say that the words that make up the new acronym MS NOW will be remembered by almost no one.

Established in 1996, MSNBC was launched as a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC News, hence the name. This too is little remembered today, at least by some.

On Monday morning, a panelist on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC admitted with no apparent embarrassment that she had no idea that the original “MS” stood for Microsoft. So much for the expertise of commentators on TV.

This panel discussion was suddenly convened to discuss the rebranding and rave about it just after Joe Scarborough announced the “breaking news” of this corporate name change (screenshot above).

On the MSNBC web page, the video clip was accompanied by “a message to our community” written in the manner of breaking publicity, not breaking news.

“You might be wondering, why is this change happening?” the message asked its community.

“As part of our move to a new media company, VERSANT [caps theirs] -- which also includes CNBC, Golf Channel, GolfNow, and SportsEngine -- we’ll no longer be part of NBCUniversal and NBC News. This gives us the freedom to chart our own path forward, and we’re excited about where it’s headed.”

This was the spin taken up by Scarborough when he said, “This shows we’re independent,” as if MSNBC’s association with NBC News for 29 years was somehow stifling and confining.

And what of the name MS NOW in particular? Apparently, “MS” does not mean Microsoft anymore, but the generic “My Source.” 

But to some who might encounter it for the first time, it could just as easily stand for MySpace, Ms. magazine or multiple sclerosis.

Some might even pronounce it “Miz,” like the shorthand for “Les Misérables.”

As for “NOW,” it might remind some of “Nixon Now” (long-ago campaign slogan), “Whip Inflation Now” (long-ago slogan coined to fight high prices) and “Serenity Now!” (Frank Costanza in “Seinfeld”).

The problem with MS NOW is that, in the final analysis, no one knows what it stands for, either literally or symbolically.