MS Now and Then: Jeff Zucker, Andy Lack and Phil Griffin convene with veteran anchors to mark 30 years of pushing our buttons.
MS Now's former bosses convened for a 30th anniversary dinner taking home a commemorative bottle of champagne, proof that T&L budgets still exist.
Last night left-leaning news channel, MS Now, formerly MSNBC, celebrated its 30th anniversary with an executive dinner at Manhattan’s French restaurant Lafayette. Back when the channel was launched in July 1996, Today anchor Katie Couric was still wondering to Alison: “what is internet?” and the network was figuring out how to marry itself to the information superhighway. A partnership with Microsoft was born, until they sold out in 2005. Over the years the news network brought its owners at Comcast plenty of dough in affiliate fees and some hair pulling at straight news sibling NBC News, but more recently MS brought a whole lot of agita from President Donald Trump. Six months ago, after making a sizeable donation to the White House East Wing demolition effort - drawing flack from MS anchors - the cable operator decided to spin off the network along with CNBC into a new cable channel pure play Versant.
Former chiefs including Jeff Zucker, Andy Lack and former MSNBC chief Phil Griffin, mingled with some former network bosses including Erik Sorensen, Dan Abrams and Rashida Jones who’s now helping Piers Morgan grow his Uncensored business. The network is currently under the aegis of Rebecca Kutler.
Was Donald Trump on the menu? I’m told he wasn’t mentioned in the speeches, but its honestly hard to believe his name wasn’t raised at all as the party goers tucked into the steak and fish options. One vet told me the discussions were about how much work it took to get the network off the ground, and how little credit the cable channel received at the outset. Of course a few months later Fox News got launched on a public access channel on Time Warner’s cable system after an intense legal battle. And the rest, as they say, is history. ( You can read more on this in my upcoming Rupert Murdoch biography.)
See who else joined the party below.
