MSNBC Will Stream Much of TV Lineup on Peacock

MSNBC President Rashida Jones said in an interview that the streaming push will introduce the TV shows to viewers who watch the network’s channel on Peacock, which until now had been called “The Choice.” The network is doing away with that brand soon, putting all of its streaming programming under the banner MSNBC on Peacock, she said.

“The idea is, you can watch it live on cable or you can watch it at your leisure on streaming,” Ms. Jones said.

The decision to put some of MSNBC’s programming on Peacock with a delay allows the network to capture streaming subscribers without competing directly with the cable bundle, a profit center for TV news. Some of the network’s programs, including “The Rachel Maddow Show,” “The Last Word” and “The 11th Hour” aren’t slated to appear on Peacock, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Ms. Jones said that the latest push isn’t an attempt to create an exact replica of the programming viewers get on cable.

The move is part of an effort by NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde to transition the company’s news networks toward streaming as viewers cut the cable cord. The group’s offerings include NBC News Now, an advertising-supported streaming service that is widely distributed on services including Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube and Roku Inc.’s the Roku Channel.

Competitors of NBCUniversal, a unit of Comcast Corp. CMCSA -1.58% , also are making significant investments in streaming. CNN has said it plans to hire hundreds of employees to launch CNN+, a coming streaming service that is slated to cost $5.99 a month and include shows from prominent journalists including Chris Wallace, Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper.

Fox News in 2018 launched Fox Nation, a service with original programming from popular hosts including Tucker Carlson. Fox News said last year it would stream some of its most popular shows on Fox Nation after they aired on TV. Fox Corp. Chief Executive Lachlan Murdoch said on the company’s second-quarter earnings conference call in February that Fox Nation’s net subscribers grew by more than 30% in the December quarter compared with the previous quarter. He didn’t provide specific figures.

Fox and The Wall Street Journal parent News Corp share common ownership.

Other broadcast networks also have joined the streaming fray. CBS News in January relaunched its streaming network, which now includes all of its broadcast programming and live round-the-clock coverage.

Noah Oppenheim, president of NBC News, said in an interview that NBC News and MSNBC have distinct identities on their respective streaming services: NBC News Now, which launched in 2019, stands for nonpartisan journalism and MSNBC on Peacock emphasizes opinion programming, he said. Mr. Oppenheim said NBCUniversal News Group’s streaming efforts are profitable but declined to provide specific figures.

“A lot of our success in the space—both financially and editorially—is driven by the fact that we have a news gathering and reporting engine that is NBC News,” Mr. Oppenheim said.

MSNBC’s streaming push will allow some of the network’s anchors to produce different versions of their shows for traditional TV and streaming. Symone Sanders, who later this year will begin hosting a weekend show on MSNBC’s TV network and one of several streaming shows for Peacock on MSNBC, said in an interview that she is already contemplating in-depth segments for the streaming show that she might not have time for on the cable channel.

“Maybe there’s something I really wanted to do on the linear show that I didn’t get to do because breaking news had to dominate most of my linear program,” Ms. Sanders said. “That means that I can do the segment I didn’t get to do on streaming.”

Hallie Jackson, senior Washington correspondent for NBC News, said briefings from the Pentagon on the Russia-Ukraine war have lately pre-empted other coverage plans for her MSNBC show, “Hallie Jackson Reports.” But on her streaming show, “Hallie Jackson Now,” Ms. Jackson has more time to make sense of the day’s developments by checking in with reporters in the field, she said.

Write to Benjamin Mullin at [email protected]