NBC and could be days away from announcing a decision to part ways on their joint online news venture, MSNBC.com, according to a report from Howard Kurtz of The Daily Beast.
Kurtz cites an unnamed NBC spokesman as confirming that talks about the broadcast company buying its 50 percent share of MSNBC.com from Microsoft are underway. Under the proposed plan, according to Kurtz, about half of MSNBC's 300 Redmond employees would move to another location.
Krutz says NBC wants to have more control over its online news presence:
NBC executives have grown frustrated at not having sole control of the MSNBC website, which does original reporting as well as aggregating content from the AP, Reuters, New York Times and elsewhere. At the same time, as the MSNBC channel has forged a separate identity as the liberal home of Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz and others, the company has worried about the brand confusion caused by its straight-news site bearing the same name. And the cable channel has lacked a site solely devoted to pushing its personalities.
Local technology blog GeekWire has speculated the 150 employees could be headed to the former Seattle P-I building, but no such plan has been announced by either company.
Click here to read the full Daily Beast report.
