MSNBC to set up its own standalone D.C. bureau ahead of spinoff

A handful of sentences in the announcement about MSNBC’s schedule changes provided a hint at how the network will operate after Comcast completes its spinoff of it and most of its other cable properties. 

MSNBC announces revised lineup

MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler indicated that the network will consolidate production in New York and Washington, D.C., and open its own standalone bureau in the district. The announcement also referred to plans to hire staff for what is referred to as a “new newsgathering operation.”

Potential locations for this bureau were not announced.

The memo also notes that MSNBC will no longer use Miami’s Telemundo Center to produce programs. “The Katie Phang Show” and “José Díaz-Balart Reports” along with one weekend edition of “NBC Nightly News” for NBC’s broadcast network were the primary shows produced there on a regular basis.

It was not immediately clear how New York production will be handled or if there are plans to create an entire standalone news division to service MSNBC. Currently, New York-based shows originate from NBC’s studios in 30 Rockefeller Center, namely Studio 3A and Studio 3AW (historically known as Studio 3C). MSNBC also shares news gathering and production facilities with NBC News.

While creating a standalone bureau or, potentially, an entire news operation, will likely result in duplication and, in theory, increase the overall costs when distributed across both NBCU and “SpinCo.” However, NBCU could be looking at creating at least a partial newsgathering operation for MSNBC in order to further separate it from NBC News.

Initially, when Comcast announced plans to spin off most of its cable properties, including MSNBC, into its own company, it was not clear if the two operations would continue to share news resources and, if so, how the new company might account for those costs in its financials.

There have been mentions that all or part of “SpinCo” could eventually be sold to another company, so this could be one reason why NBCU is keen to start building out separate newsgathering teams, which could showcase how much it costs to run networks such as MSNBC and streamline the separation of operations if and when a sale is made.

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Separating expenses and financials as much as possible could also be more desirable from a corporate structure and accounting standpoint.