As MSNBC Becomes MS NOW, Ali Velshi And Stephanie Ruhle Take Viewer Questions On YouTube

It’s the Wednesday before MSNBC sheds its peacock feathers and becomes MS NOW, and hosts Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle know viewers have questions–about how policies in Washington will impact their budgets at home–and questions about their network and what will or won’t change when the MS NOW brand debuts on Saturday.

“I think MSNBC–or MS NOW–has always been a place of smart content,” Ruhle told me, stressing that on her show, The 11th Hour, as on Velshi, the two hosts don’t just read a teleprompter. “We are not TV presenters that are getting a script and covering different topics every day.”

‘A good conversation with your friends’

Ruhle and Velshi, longtime friends who are pairing up for a weekly show on YouTube, It’s Happening with Velshi & Ruhle, have long believed that covering the news means having a conversation with viewers–not just talking to them. “We’re going to go out of our way to emulate what Stephanie does at 11 o’clock with some of the smartest people around,” Velshi said, describing It’s Happening as an engaging way of covering the news that brings in not just the network’s global correspondents to share expertise–but also viewers, who have questions about the news and their own perspectives on why it matters.

“You’re going to leave this conversation like a good conversation with your friends,” Velshi said, stressing that he learns as much from viewers as he hopes they learn from him. “There are people who are critical of what the media is or has become, the fact that we’re a little Ivory Tower, the fact that we exist in bubbles, the fact that we don’t necessarily know what what people out there are thinking and saying, and I don’t mark, I don’t fully disagree with that. I think sometimes they’re right.”

‘Let’s dig deep and solve these problems together’

The YouTube show–Wednesdays at 3 p.m. ET–allows viewers to ask questions in real time, a kind of deeper engagement with the audience that Velshi and Ruhle hope is an indication of how MS NOW will serve the viewers who tune in starting Saturday.

“What we’re trying to do with this show, and with this new brand is deep in that,” Ruhle told me. “And so we’re saying ‘here’s the news that’s out there. Let’s discuss your questions in these areas. Let’s dig deep and try to solve these problems together.’”

Both hosts have deep experience working in and covering business. Ruhle’s media career dates to her work as managing editor and anchor at Bloomberg after 14 years working in investment banking, and Velshi hosted a prime time hour on Al Jazeera America and served as CNN’s chief business correspondent and anchor of World Business Today and Your Money before joining MSNBC. He’s also a weekly economics contributor to NPR’s Here and Now.

In their earlier roles, both hosts have seen how business news is often seen as somehow separate and distinct from other news, which they believe doesn’t serve viewers well in a time dominated by political changes bringing major impacts to family budgets, small business, and the job market.

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“I think the way that the media has always been divided into business news and then just plain old national news,” Ruhle said, doesn’t keep up with the realities of life in America in 2025. “Business news doesn’t cover meat and potato economic issues. And your average person, or your average news consumer often says, I don’t follow business news. I don’t understand that wonky language. And it’s funny, like when I came from Bloomberg to NBC, it took a retraining of myself, even the way I talk about economics, had to change.”

‘I don’t want people screaming at a flat screen TV’

“When Covid hit, we experienced more and more business and economic stories being really important to everyday individuals,” Ruhle said. “And rather than say we’re going to do a business show on MSNBC, we’re doing a show that is strictly Q and A.”

Instead of covering Donald Trump’s tariffs and how they’ll impact traders on Wall Street, Velshi and Ruhle say their mission on YouTube–and starting this weekend on MS NOW–is to cover how those tariffs are affecting families. Stories that sometimes business news misses entirely–until families tune in and ask questions.

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“We as journalists sometimes miss the boat on what’s impacting people,” Velshi told me. “It doesn’t matter what your ideology is. I want that small business owner to send the question in to us and say, You need to understand, with all the regulations we’re now facing, how it’s impossible for me to pay the rent or pay my employees x and y…we constantly hear people say, you know, the media is not talking about the issues that matter to me most, or, you know, I’m screaming this at my TV. I don’t want anybody screaming at a flat TV.”

‘We’re the economic extra sauce for people who don’t have time to think about economics’

Little about Velshi and Ruhle’s shows or daily reporting will change when MSNBC fades into cable news history this weekend–the cable network spinning off from NBC, which has owned and operated MSNBC since its debut nearly 30 years ago. The network has promised viewers that they can expect the “same mission. New name.”

“We’re talking to a general news audience who wants to be engaged and informed and how to get better and smarter,” Ruhle told me. While some cable news networks fill hours with “around the table” conversations dominated by partisan debates–shouty panels of Democrats and Republicans talking over each other–that won’t be what you’ll see on their YouTube show or on MS NOW.

“Come in, just join us and tell us what you want,” Velshi said. Send us your questions. Take advantage of the fact that on YouTube and TikTok and people can send us questions. “I think if the viewer gets the message that they’re communicating with hosts on MSNBC or MS NOW, and that will work its way through to the way we cover things, I think that makes that makes us better for our viewers over the longer term.”