Microsoft, Nbc, Launch News Venture
MSNBC, the joint venture of NBC and Microsoft, began airing its all-news format on cable TV and computer screens Monday after a brief problem getting online.
“It looks like a cross between a Seattle coffeehouse and the bridge of the starship Enterprise,” MSNBC anchorwoman Jodi Applegate said, previewing her bare-brick and I-beam studio for NBC’s “Today” show.
The set had as many computer monitors as TV screens, plus a battery of coffee and espresso machines.
The CNN-like cable TV service got rolling at 9 a.m. EDT, but the network’s Internet component, MSNBC Interactive, at first displayed the same text, graphics and pictures it had shown since going online Wednesday.
“There were a few last-minute, fine-tuning details,” explained NBC spokeswoman Beth Comstock. The World Wide Web site finally got rolling, offering news updates, poll results and other fresh material, within two hours of its cable counterpart’s debut.
MSNBC, a direct competitor to Ted Turner’s Cable News Network, will air 14 hours of original programming daily, including a prime-time newscast anchored by NBC’s chief White House correspondent, Brian Williams, and “InterNight,” a newstalk show with NBC News stars alternating as hosts.
President Clinton is the first guest of “InterNight.” He’ll be interviewed by NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and answer questions from callers on a toll-free phone, and from e-mail sent to the MSNBC web site: http://msnbc.com.
As of late Friday, the site had gotten more than 52,000 “hits” from interested cybersurfers, a network spokesman said. Visitors got to point-and-click on their highest priority of six issues - crime, health care, presidential character, etc. - and frame an e-mail question in 20 words or less.
Text, graphics, downloadable video segments and instantaneous links to other web sites will supplement the TV information.
MSNBC was debuting in an expected 22.5 million homes and on the Web in uncounted numbers, entering a competition which Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. vows to enter this year. No one knows if there is profit for another news channel.