Launched on July 15, 1996, and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, the channel primarily broadcasts rolling news coverage and liberal-leaning political commentary.

Under new leadership, MSNBC gradually decreased its reliance on NBC News personalities in the early-2020s, and began expanding opinion programming in its morning and weekend lineups.

[13] After completing its seven-year survey of cable channels, the Project for Excellence in Journalism said in 2007 that "MSNBC is moving to make politics a brand, with a large dose of opinion and personality.

[18] In the aftermath of September 11, MSNBC began calling itself "America's NewsChannel" and hired opinionated hosts like Alan Keyes, Phil Donahue, Pat Buchanan, and Tucker Carlson.

[28] In May 2008, NBC News president Steve Capus said, "It used to be people didn't have to worry about MSNBC because it was an also-ran cable channel.... That's not the case anymore.

"[28] Tim Russert's sudden death in June 2008 removed the person whom The Wall Street Journal called the "rudder for the network" and led to a period of transition.

[35] The channel also beat CNN in total adult viewers in March, marking the seventh out of the past eight months that MSNBC achieved that result.

[37] On October 11, 2010, MSNBC unveiled a new $2 million marketing campaign, "Lean Forward"; MSNBC president Phil Griffin considered the two-year campaign an effort to promote the channel as a progressive competitor to the conservative-leaning Fox News Channel, explaining that "we've taken on CNN and we beat them," and that the new slogan was "about making tomorrow better than today, a discussion about politics and the actions and passions of our time.

Ronan Farrow, Joy Reid, Krystal Ball, Touré, Abby Huntsman, Alex Wagner, and Ed Schultz lost their shows.

Daytime news coverage was led primarily by Brian Williams, Stephanie Ruhle, Jose Diaz-Balart, Andrea Mitchell, Craig Melvin, Thomas Roberts, and Kate Snow, in addition to "beat leaders" stationed throughout the newsroom.

[62] That month, amid the first presidency of Donald Trump, MSNBC became the highest rated American cable news network in primetime for the first time.

On March 2, 2020, Chris Matthews abruptly announced his resignation from Hardball effective immediately, after comparing the rise of Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential campaign to the German invasion of France.

[77] Meanwhile, as part of her new contract with NBCUniversal, Rachel Maddow took an extended hiatus from her program to focus on other film and podcast projects, with rotating guest hosts filling in for her.

[89] On November 20, 2024, NBCUniversal announced its intent to spin off most of its cable networks, including MSNBC, as a new publicly traded company controlled by Comcast shareholders.

[97] Nielsen ratings showed that MSNBC ranked second among basic cable networks, averaging 1.8 million viewers[clarification needed] in 2019, behind rival Fox News.

[2] During the first night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, MSNBC had an average viewership of over 5 million, the highest among three major cable news networks and ahead of CNN.

[104] Before 2010, MSNBC was not available to Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse television subscribers in the portions of New York, northern New Jersey, and Connecticut that overlapped Cablevision's service area.

Washington Post media analyst Howard Kurtz said in 2008 that the channel's evening lineup "has clearly gravitated to the left in recent years and often seems to regard itself as the antithesis of Fox News.

[121] In September 2008, MSNBC stated that Olbermann and Chris Matthews would no longer anchor live political events, with David Gregory assuming that role.

Nando Di Fino of the Mediaite website said MSNBC was "giving up on the straight news coverage, and instead [appearing] to be aiming to create some controversy.

"[130] Citing data from the A.C. Nielsen TV ratings service, the article noted that while the Fox News Channel had a larger overall viewership than MSNBC, the two networks were separated by only around 300,000 viewers among the 25–54 age bracket most attractive to advertisers.

The documentary also showed the Michigan Militia's survival training camp and hit the campaign trail with Kentucky senatorial candidate Rand Paul.

After the documentary aired, FreedomWorks, chaired by Armey, called for a boycott of Dawn and Procter & Gamble, which advertised during Hardball with Chris Matthews.

"[149] It has been argued that MSNBC, like other cable networks, "is simply not incentivized to be informative", and instead turns its "viewers into partisan junkies who don't change the channel because they need a fix that tells them they're right about everything (and that the other side is wrong).

"[150] Jason Linkins in 2014 claimed that MSNBC prefers "the incessant production of insidery ideations" over "the service of the public trust in an honest and equitable way.

"[151] Political commentator Melissa Harris-Perry and her guest panel, in a look back on the 2013 segment of her show, featured a picture of former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his extended family.

[154] In March 2019, Yashar Ali, a journalist for The Huffington Post accused Dafna Linzer, a managing editor at MSNBC, of ceding editorial control to the Democratic National Committee.

[163][164] The following week, Chuck Todd criticized the rhetoric of Sanders supporters by quoting a conservative article which compared them to Nazi brown shirts.

[172] Following the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, it was reported by Semafor that a number of Muslim hosts (including Mehdi Hasan, Mohyeldin, and Ali Velshi) were sidelined from coverage.

[175] On November 5, 2010, MSNBC President Phil Griffin suspended Keith Olbermann indefinitely without pay for having contributed $2,400 (the maximum personal donation limit) to each of three Democratic Party candidates during the 2010 midterm election cycle.