Report: MSNBC.com considering name change to stop brand confusion

Report: MSNBC.com considering name change to stop brand confusion

2010-10-07 10:17:58 GMT+7 (ICT)

REDMOND, WASHINGTON (BNO NEWS) -- NBC Universal and Microsoft, the two parent companies of MSNBC.com, are holding high-level talks to consider a name change for the website, according to the New York Times on Wednesday.

MSNBC.com is currently the third most popular news website in the United States but is a different company from cable news channel MSNBC, which has received increasing criticism for being biased in recent years.

Charlie Tillinghast, MSNBC.com's president, wrote in March that giving two different companies the same name is "brand insanity," according to a memo obtained by the New York Times. "Both strategies are fine, but naming them the same thing is brand insanity," he said.

MSNBC.com this week decided to push back a board meeting on a brand-new news identity by three weeks, the Times reported. "Consensus in this case is a tall order," Tillinghast wrote in a message to employees.

Under the current plan, according to the Times, the MSNBC.com web address would become a site exclusively for the cable channel, fulfilling the channel's desire to have an independent website to promote its programs. The existing news site, called the "Blue site" internally, the paper reports, would move to a new and as-yet-undetermined Web address.

According to the report, MSNBC.com is considering NBCNews.com as one of its new names. That little-known web address is not new, however, and has been linking to MSNBC.com for many years.

Tillinghast, when speaking to the New York Times, declined to comment as to which names are being considered. "We have an enviable portfolio of news brands and routinely have strategic conversations about how to maximize them," he said.

However, Tillinghast said, he hoped that MSNBC.com's board members could agree on a new name at a mid-November board meeting, so that "we will have our future identity known before Thanksgiving and be able to move forward with focus and certainty from there."

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