Did Comcast announce in November 2024 that it was selling MSNBC? No, that's not true: According to the corporation's press release and other news reports, Comcast only announced moving some of its assets, including MSNBC, into a separate independent publicly traded entity. No credible media organization confirmed the rumor about the sale of MSNBC, with that rumor being elevated by Elon Musk on his account on X.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on November 12, 2024. It began:
Comcast is putting MSNBC up for sale.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Nov 25 15:31:28 2024 UTC)
The only relevant November 2024 press release (archived here) on the Comcast corporate website (archived here) said nothing about selling MSNBC. That announcement was published on November 20, 2024, under the title:
Comcast Announces Intention to Create Leading Independent Media Business Through Spin-Off of Select Cable Television Networks
The press release said the new entity will become a "publicly traded company" consisting of MSNBC and CNBC, among other assets, and that it will have "the same dual-class share structure as Comcast." In practice, the latter typically means, as Investopedia (archived here) explains, that "one class is offered to the general public, while the other is offered to company founders, executives, and family ... the class offered to the general public often has limited or no voting rights, while the class available to founders and executives has more voting power and often provides for majority control of the company." None of it is the same as "putting MSNBC up for sale" as a standalone asset.
Google searches of Comcast corporate websites across November 2024 announcements for the keyword "MSNBC" seen here (archived here) and here (archived here) didn't produce any results suggesting that the company said it would sell this cable network.
The story about the creation of the new business entity for Comcast's cable networks was first reported (archived here) by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on October 31, 2024. That article said nothing about selling MSNBC. Instead, the newspaper reported that Comcast thought of the idea as "a vehicle to acquire other well-known U.S. networks." The new company would be owned by Comcast shareholders, the article said.
As Comcast issued an official press release confirming the move on November 20, 2024, news media published additional reports. The New York Times (archived here) and the WSJ (archived here) specified that one-third of voting shares in the new company will belong to Brian Roberts, Comcast's CEO (archived here). A CNN article (archived here) added that a hypothetical immediate sale of one asset scheduled to be part of the new company might conflict with the announced plan to carry out the entity's formation as a tax-free spinoff.
In light of the news, X's owner Elon Musk published a series of posts, suggesting that he might consider buying MSNBC. Some of those entries can be seen here (archived here), here (archived here), here (archived here) and here (archived here). None of those posts was a formal offer. They didn't show any documentation confirming approval of such a transaction, either.
As of this writing, a search across Google News for the keywords seen here (archived here) and here (archived here) only showed reporting discussing Musk's posts, not that MSNBC was "put up for sale" by Comcast in November 2024.
Lead Stories contacted Comcast and MSNBC for additional comments but didn't receive an immediate response.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of the claims mentioning MSNBC can be found here. Stories of claims about Elon Musk are here.
