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Happy Monday! Will Spike Lee's Colin Kaepernick docuseries find a new home? Will The Academy Awards stream on YouTube someday? Will TikTokspeak ever make sense? Lots of questions, and some answers, below...

BREAKING

MSNBC has a new name 

VERSANT

As the cable news channel MSNBC splits up with NBC News, it is also dropping the "NBC" from its name. Later this year, the channel will become MS NOW, which stands for My Source for News, Opinion, and the World.

"This new branding underscores our mission: to serve as a destination for breaking news and best-in-class opinion journalism, all rooted in accurate and reported facts," MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler said in an internal memo just now.

You might recall that when Comcast first announced that it was spinning off most of its cable channels into a new company called Versant, MSNBC expected to keep its name. But Versant CEO Mark Lazarus said this morning that NBCUniversal decided to keep the iconic peacock symbol for its own purposes.

So logos for brands like the Golf Channel and CNBC are being remade. CNBC is keeping its name, however. For one thing, the business news brand has multiple licensing deals outside the US that utilize the name. Maybe more importantly, CNBC hasn't suffered from the sort of brand confusion that MSNBC and NBC News have.

MS says its 'brand promise' won't change

MSNBC — excuse me, MS NOW! — has been on a hiring spree of late, out of necessity, scooping up dozens of journalists for a new newsroom that will compete with NBC News, along with countless other outlets. (And I hear there are even more new hires that have yet to be announced.) 

The rebranding "allows us to set our own course and assert our independence as we continue to build our own modern newsgathering operation," Kutler said this morning.

"While our name will be changing, who we are and what we do will not,” she added. "Our commitment to our work and our audiences will not waiver from what the brand promise has been for three decades." Here's my full story for CNN.com...

All 👀 on Trump-Zelensky

President Trump will meet with Volodymyr Zelensky today at the White House, just days after meeting with — and literally rolling out a red carpet for — Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Check out CNN's live updates page here.

The type of press access will be telling. In Alaska, Trump shunned the journalists who wanted to ask questions and only talked to Sean Hannity afterward. (And he basically said he regretted agreeing to that chat.) Today, the press pool will be able to shout questions to Trump and Zelensky, so both the questions and the answers will be revealing. Notably, the White House is only allowing TV cameras and still photographers, not correspondents, at the arrival of European leaders and the "family photo" with those leaders, thereby limiting what can be asked and when...

 >> Per Axios, Fox's Bret Baier is set to interview Zelensky after the WH meetings...

FTC loses to Media Matters in court

Federal judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan has blocked the FTC's investigation of Media Matters, the liberal advocacy group known for its campaigns against Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and Elon Musk's X. "Media Matters is likely to succeed in its First Amendment retaliation claim, which is all it needs at this stage," the judge wrote while granting Media Matters the preliminary injunction it was seeking. Here's my full story with all the context.

 >> "The court's ruling demonstrates the importance of fighting over folding, which far too many are doing when confronted with intimidation from the Trump admin,” Media Matters president Angelo Carusone said in a statement.

 >> The FTC hasn't responded to my request for comment, and this legal battle is likely to continue...

Kaepernick docuseries sidelined

It was going to be a multi-part series for ESPN Films. But "ESPN, Colin Kaepernick and Spike Lee have collectively decided to no longer proceed with this project as a result of certain creative differences," the network told Reuters over the weekend. The statement was prompted by Lee saying at a red carpet event that "it's not coming out," then declining further comment, citing an NDA.

 >> USA Today's Mike Freeman, who was interviewed for the doc, asks, "Can the project be salvaged? I don't know. What I do know is that this is all incredibly sad. It's devastating. What happens next seems murky. It's possible Lee and Kaepernick can shop the series elsewhere..."

 >> And Freeman is right about that: I'm told by a person familiar with the matter that the project can be shopped... 

'CBS Evening News' revamp?

More changes are definitely coming to the perennially third-place "CBS Evening News." It's just a matter of what changes and when. Variety's Brian Steinberg says executives are planning to "tweak" the current John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois dual-anchor format. One of the men will be in the field more often — perhaps an acknowledgement that the 30-minute newscast doesn't need two anchors behind a desk in New York...

OAN says sorry for AI military pics

Liam Reilly writes: After we asked MAGA-network OAN about its use of AI-generated photos for last Wednesday's segment on women recruits, a rep told us that "the images violated company policies, which have been re-enforced with all staff" and that "management has taken additional actions to ensure the issue is appropriately addressed."

Matt Gaetz, whose show used the Grok-produced photos, issued an on-air apology for using the images on Thursday. "We made a mistake," Gaetz said. "We used AI-generated images of female service members as part of our B-roll package, and we shouldn’t have. The DOD didn’t give us these images; Grok did. And we'll use better judgment going forward."

Six 💯 reads 

 >> David Ingram and Aria Bendix point out that "anti-vaccine myths surged on social media ahead of the CDC shooting." (NBC News)

 >> Bobby Allyn documents how MeidasTouch is growing by "tapping into an audience of frustrated progressives, some of whom feel abandoned by traditional media." (NPR)

 >> Joe Flint profiles "the dealmaker in the center of the manosphere," TKO president Mark Shapiro. (WSJ)

 >> Emma Goldberg and Jessica Testa size up Katie Miller's arrival in the "womanosphere," the "fast-growing world of conservative podcasters offering women lifestyle advice." (NYT)

 >> Drew Harwell says some AI-video makers are making thousands of dollars a month flooding a "strange new internet" full of fakery. They're "enticed by the possibility of infinite creation for minimal work." (WaPo)

 >> "Scroll 'Em if You Got 'Em:" Joseph Epstein says, "I smoked cigarettes decades ago" and "my cellphone habit is remarkably similar." Maybe he's been watching too much AI slop! (WSJ)

YouTube's 'very loud' idea for Oscars

YouTube "has inquired about buying the rights to the Academy Awards," Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw scoops, citing sources. "Supplanting ABC and Disney as the official home of the Academy Awards... would be a huge statement from YouTube and a shock to the industry." And it "would also be very loud, which is the whole point. Shifting the program to YouTube would generate a lot of attention for a show that has been losing relevance each year."

The Academy's current deal with ABC is up in 2028...

'The extremes of long and short'

It wasn't just Taylor Swift who made a long-form podcast move last week. "For Drake, it was 189 minutes on a livestream hosted by Adin Ross, a conversation largely devoted to reckless-wager gambling and smack talk," the NYT's Jon Caramanica writes.

"That they're both turning to the durational for their promotional opportunities reflects a shift in the media landscape," to the "extremes of long and short." Hours-long chats are clipped into bite-sized clips, which are then viewed by millions more people across social media. Read his observations about it here...

ICYMI...

Some great reads from the past few days...

 >> Alex Weprin writes that the NFL is "muscling into Hollywood's end zone." (THR)

 >> "South Park" and "King of the Hill" "may be TV’s sharpest observers of the current political climate," Chris Klimek writes. (WaPo)

 >> Jeremy Fuster argues that the "KPop Demon Hunters" craze "couldn't have happened in movie theaters." (TheWrap)

 >> Lisa Respers France's latest is about "Nicolandria:" They "aren't just a cultural phenomenon, they're a beloved part of reality couple history." (CNN)

Weekend box office takeaways 

"Zach Cregger's 'Weapons' continues to fire on all cylinders," ranking #1 at the box office for a second weekend, "followed by Disney's family comedy 'Freakier Friday,'" THR's Pamela McClintock reports. Bob Odenkirk's "Nobody 2" came in third.

 >> Variety's Rebecca Rubin says: "A fun box office battle is brewing between 'Superman' and 'F1': Which big-budget tentpole will be the first to cross $600 million in global ticket sales? No matter the order, these milestones are impressive for two films that didn’t enter theaters as guaranteed hits..."

LAST BUT NOT LEAST...

TikTokspeak gets dictionary'd

"The increasing use of TikTok trends and social media terms in everyday conversation has led Cambridge Dictionary to include 'skibidi,' 'delulu' and 'tradwife' in the 6,000 new words it has added to its online edition over the past year," CNN's Issy Ronald reports.

So "how exactly do you describe the precise meaning of 'that wasn't very skibidi rizz of you' or 'As Gen Z say, I've entered my delulu era?'" Here are the answers...

This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.