Big scoop today from Howard Kurtz at the Daily Beast, who writes that NBC is now in talks with Microsoft to buy back its share in MSNBC.
If it happens, and Kurtz indicates it’s a done deal, then presumably the operation would move almost half of the 300-person staff off the Redmond campus of Microsoft. Under the plan, MSNBC.com would be rebranded as NBCNews.com.
The cable TV version of the operation is known as a liberal-thinking counterpart to Fox News, with program hosts like Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz.
It wasn’t much of a media empire, but it was nice to have a national media outlet down the road from Seattle. Now, it looks like, even that will go away.