Microsoft, NBC dissolve MSNBC.com joint venture

Yahoo/AP ^

[nuconvert]

Microsoft is pulling out of the joint venture that owned MSNBC.com, freeing the world's largest software maker to build its own online news service.

[Pollster1]

MSNBC is still pretending to be news?

[Tigercap]

How funny: Yahoo calls msnbc a “news network”.

[mkjessup]

This a tragic loss for all three of their viewers.

Now if they could somehow dissolve the putrid memories that were imparted to America by that pack of left wing feces-headed fools, they would be finally accomplishing something in the public interest.

[Izzy Dunne]

all three of their viewers.

Three? I thought it was more than that.

Oh, I forgot - Olbermann's mom quit watching when he was excommunicated.

[alloysteel]

I always wondered at that particular alliance between Microsoft and NBC anyway. What was the business model? NBC certainly already had enough “news” outlets, and even some sort of entertainment programming. Was MSNBC to run online gaming? Was it supposed to be a unique news-gathering enterprise, like a superblog? Bloomberg is already doing that.

Squeezed out of existence and left looking like a mummified corpse.

What is going to be plugged into that soon-to-be-vacant channel on my cable TV lineup?

[citizen]

Change their name to:

Progressive

Online

Service

[citizen]

Change their name to:

Progressive
Online
Service

[P.O.E.]

Gotta love the spin - free to build its own news network.

Like disgraced politicians resigning to “spend more time with family”.

[VanDeKoik]

I think it was more about trying to create some on-air and online partnership that back in the mid-90s was a pretty new thing. It was supposed to be “multimedia” and “interactive” or some such 90s buzzword laden thing.

[Dan Nunn]

This article is referring to their website. Apparently, the two split their TV partnership in 2005.

[P.O.E.]

Didn’t Time/AOL spectacularly fail way back when?

“To call the transaction the worst in history, as it is now taught in business schools, does not begin to tell the story of how some of the brightest minds in technology and media collaborated to produce a deal now regarded by many as a colossal mistake. “

In RetrospectHow the AOL-Time Warner Merger Went So Wrong
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/business/media/11merger.html?pagewanted=all

[Alas Babylon!]

Microsoft, in particular, had grown frustrated by contract terms requiring it to exclusively feature MSNBC.com content on its own websites. That exasperation was exacerbated by the MSNBC cable channel's strategy to counter Fox News Channel's appeal to conservative viewers by tailoring its programming for an audience with a liberal viewpoint.

Yup... LIBERAL!

The strategy fed a perception that material from MSNBC's website was politically slanted, too.

Ya think?

"Being limited to MSNBC.com content was problematic to us because we couldn't have the multiple news sources and the multiple perspectives that our users were telling us that they wanted," said Bob Visse, general manager of MSN.com.

In other words, MSNBC is too liberal for even Microsoft, and customers were getting fed up with it!

[mkjessup]

This article is referring to their website. Apparently, the two split their TV partnership in 2005.

Thanks for that update Dan, for staying with the unfolding story before us, and now for more of the social impact of the Microsoft/NBC breakup, we take you to our own Humblegunner, Gunner? Are you there? What are your views on this surprise development?

[mkjessup]

all three of their viewers.
Three? I thought it was more than that.
Oh, I forgot - Olbermann's mom quit watching when he was excommunicated.

I keep hoping that Jay Carney will be found in the fetal position sucking his thumb one day, carted off to St Elizabeth's Hospital in DC, and that Kieff 0lbermann will be the new choice for White House Press Secretary, that sort of insane entertainment would usually require one to pay a cover charge at the door, lol

[GunningForTheBuddha]

I would laugh if Microsoft realized where the real money was, and went to the right of Fox news.

[Incorrigible]

Free at last!

[gunsequalfreedom]

Ok, you tried it twice - posting it that is. I still don’t get it. What is the significance of POS? Thanks.

[humblegunner]

I’ll have to check a few well-researched and brilliantly written blogs and get back to you on that.

[EQAndyBuzz]

“What was the business model?”

There wasn’t a business model. It was a lesson to Microsoft on what shouldn’t be done if you want to create a news network.