MS NOW Reveals New Member Tier Prices In Bet On Loyalty

As it forges a new identity outside of NBCUniversal, the left-leaning cable stalwart MS NOW is betting on membership as a major revenue driver. The channel’s chief, Rebecca Kutler, unveiled what she described as “the first step in a long-term strategy to deepen our relationship with audiences,” namely a $7.99 per month or $79.99 annual subscription to the outlet in a tier that will launch Sept. 9. In a memo to staff, Kutler wrote that the channel began researching what a member model could look like a year ago and it solicited “18,000 survey responses and one-on-one conversations with consumers, iterative rounds of product prototype and concept testing,” and plans an approach focused on “super fans” and “future fans” of the brand. The offering will include “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 impact everyday life, and 24/7 access to live streams and television programming.” The move has long been signaled at MS NOW, which has been trying to diversify its revenue away from cable carriage fees alone and branching out to more live events, podcast offerings and direct-to-consumer avenues to tap in to its loyal audience of Democrat and progressive-minded viewers. The channel has overhauled its lineup and inked content deals with upstarts like Crooked Media in order to reach beyond its base. It now tracks its YouTube views against its traditional broadcast and cable rivals and notes when it has a big month in audio (11 million podcast downloads in June, for example). As part of its scaled up event slate, the channel is going into Red State territory with a “MS NOW Live: Together In Texas” forum on Sept. 26, featuring a roster of its stars including Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, Jen Psaki, Stephanie Ruhle, Ali Velshi and Chris Hayes. The brand hit its 30 year anniversary in July from when NBC launched it in partnership with Microsoft as MSNBC in 1996. The channel now says its typical viewer watches 9 hours of its programming per week and, while viewers of the linear offering may skew older, MS NOW points out that its digital audience and TV watching base have “less than 10 percent” overlap, per figures from data giant Comscore. Traditional cable rivals like Fox News and CNN also have dipped their toes into the subscription space. The conservative-leaning Fox was relatively early to the game in launching its Fox Nation destination in 2018. That platform now has 2 million subscribers, with Fox charging an $8.99 monthly fee. Meanwhile, CNN offers its subscription tier at $6.99 a month. MS NOW’s former corporate sibling, NBC News, also has leaned in to a paywall of late with a $5.99 a month plan. The direct-to-consumer strategy has been a priority for Versant CEO Mark Lazarus, who has championed the direction for both MS NOW and sibling business network CNBC, while making clear that the offering is about more than just streaming. “MS NOW and CNBC are very strong brands with highly engaged audiences,” Lazarus told analysts on an earnings call Aug. 6. “We are creating direct-to-consumer products, not streaming products, because it is much broader than just streaming what we do on television. It is about serving those engaged audiences with content that is not just replicative of what we do on television.” Kutler added in a memo on Wednesday that the move toward membership gives MS NOW “the opportunity to invest in itself in ways that simply weren’t possible until becoming part of Versant.”