As Comcast’s NBCUniversal prepares to spinoff most of its cable assets, including key sports networks like USA and Golf Channel, the company’s decision makers are faced with the challenging task of divvying up which talent goes where.
Those decisions mostly center around NBC’s news personalities, many of whom work for both MSNBC, which will leave the mothership as part of “SpinCo,” and NBC News, which will stay under the Comcast umbrella as part of “RemainCo.” One talent that was caught in between is elections and data whiz Steve Kornacki, who regularly appears on both MSNBC and NBC News properties.
Since 2021, Kornacki has also been a key fixture on NBC Sports properties ranging from Football Night in America to the Kentucky Derby, lending his data-focused analysis to some of the country’s most-watched sporting events. And those high-profile sports assignments were an important factor when it came to Kornacki’s decision earlier this month to ink a new deal with NBC News and NBC Sports, leaving MSNBC behind.
Appearing on The Varsity podcast with Puck’s John Ourand, Kornacki was asked whether it was an easy decision to leave MSNBC behind for the “RemainCo” properties on NBC’s broadcast channel.
“I think so, yeah. And for positive reasons,” Kornacki replied. “Especially in terms of the sports side,” he continued. “I gotta tell you, I spent most of my career in some form of political journalism and I look at sports and believe in sports as something that can still unite, can still bring together, has more of a fun spirit to it, and that’s, especially after covering politics for so long, to me it’s just a refreshing thing to kind of be apart of.”
When asked whether or not he considered looking outside of NBC for his next job, Kornacki suggested he didn’t give it much thought.
“I’ll be totally honest with you, I felt so lucky to do the stuff I have, especially with the NBC Sports side. So I was kind of approaching this like, ‘This is where I want to be. Do they want me to be here? I hope they want me to be here.’ So I just looked at it as like, I didn’t particularly want to, ‘Hey let’s see if there’s five other places I can go,’ or anything like that. I was more sort of just like, if we can get this worked out the way it ended up getting worked out, that’s fine by me. I’m happy with that. Truly, when you say, ‘Was it an easy decision?’ or something, I mean that’s why I said yes so quickly. Because everything I kind of imagined we could do here, we’re doing.”
Steve Kornacki is a rare talent that is able to hold prominent roles in both political media and sports media, so it’s no surprise that he wanted to stick with the company that will allow him to do both. And with NBC slated to start airing NBA games next season, his role on NBC Sports’ flagship properties is only likely to grow. Had he opted to stick with MSNBC and SpinCo, his options on the sports side would’ve become very limited.