From left to right, Symone Sanders, Michael Steel and Luke Russert, co-hosts of MS NOW show The Weeknight.
Timothy Hiatt/Courtesy of MS NOW
Midwesterners are wearing Stetson hats and Tecovas boots. A Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader is starring in Broadway’s Chicago. Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” is about to prove America loves the Lone Star State more than Christmas.
Texas is all the rage, and even MS NOW, formerly known as MSNBC, wants in.
The cable news network, which is popular with Democrats, launched its membership service Wednesday. Thursday evening, MS NOW is coming to Dallas for its first members lounge event. It’s part of a larger strategy to target Texas as the state becomes a center of gravity for culture, politics and the economy.
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“Arguably, Texas is the biggest political story of the year, and MS NOW’s bread and butter is politics,” said Marcus Mabry, senior vice president of content strategy. He also described Texas as the center of “the most fascinating evolutions in American economics and business.”
Thursday’s private community pop-up will feature a live taping of its show The Weeknight and give members the opportunity to meet and converse with the network’s anchors and reporters. Then, on Sept. 26, Dallas will host the third annual MS NOW fan gathering, the first time the event has been held outside New York. The network has also launched a personalized-to-Dallas ad campaign for its membership.
Related: Rachel Maddow, MS NOW heads to North Texas for major fan showcase after GOP convention in Dallas
Beyond cable
MS NOW is regularly the second-most watched cable news network on television and has seen linear audience growth that is rare these days. Meanwhile, it has more than 600 million total likes on TikTok and nearly 10 million subscribers on YouTube. The membership and an expanding slate of live events is MS NOW’s next digital frontier.
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The network is now under Versant, the consortium of former Comcast linear television and digital products that completed their spin off in January, and Mabry credits the new ownership structure for MS NOW’s freedom to explore new verticals in a rapidly changing media landscape.
“This is the largest investment in the digital future of MS NOW in our 30-year history,” Mabry said.
Designed to foster community amongst members, the membership and accompanying app are a way to drive digital engagement that supports the journalism, tailored to what MS NOW’s audience craves: in-person connection, he said.
Our audience is “very dedicated, and they are smart, and they are engaged,” said former Republican National Committee chair and co-host of The Weeknight Michael Steele. “Everything is built on this idea of progression and moving forward. … We want our audiences to be a part of that as much as possible, and taking this on the road, bringing it to Dallas, is one way in which we can more fully express that.”
Thursday’s members lounge has a news hook: across town the same day, the Republican midterm convention will be underway to unite GOP candidates behind President Donald Trump’s agenda. While arena extravaganza can’t exactly be counterprogrammed by a news channel’s private members lounge, it does underscore why MS NOW thinks Texas is so important in the first place.
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Center stage will be Republican Senate hopeful and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, in a once-unthinkably close race with Democrat James Talarico. Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who fell to Paxton in the primary, has declined to attend.
“Through [this interview], I would extend a personal invitation to Sen. Cornyn to join us at the table in Dallas. We only need eight minutes of your time, sir,” Steele noted.
Symone Sanders, co-host of The Weeknight, said the fights shaping the country are playing out in Texas, from affordability and public education to immigration, demographic change, voting access and political power. “Texas is a microcosm,” she said.