Comcast mulls global NBC/Sky News Channel

MSNBC has actually moved more towards rolling news during the daytime hours - moreso than Fox I'd say.

MSNBC report something that closer resembles the news than Fox does as well.

There are two seperate companies, Fox Corporation which owns the parts of 21st Century Fox the Murdochs held onto because Disney wasn’t allowed to own both ABC and the Fox Network (and an ESPN-Fox Sports merger would have been a tough sell too), and News Corporation, which owns the Murdoch’s print media assets. In an oddity going back to the original 21CF/News demerger, all of the Australian media assets, old and new media, went to News Corp rather than Fox. Not sure why it was done that way.

Incidentally “Sky” is such a genetic title that even if Comcast did kick up a fuss (and I doubt it, these brand licensing agreements are usually nailed down before corporate divorces of the sort Fox/Sky/News have been through) they could probably get away with keeping the name and changing the logo. There is a Sky Television in NZ that has had nothing to do with Murdoch for years and has no problem calling it’s channels Sky Sport and Sky Movies.

Tell that to Microsoft - they used to have a service called Sky Drive. It's now not called that.

Yes could it be licensed to Sky NZ similar to the way the "Sky" name is licensed to TataSky in India - https://www.tatasky.com/wps/portal. At the bottom of the page:

All Sky Trademarks, and any intellectual property they contain, are owned by Sky International AG. Used under License by Tata Sky Limited

BSkyB successfully sued Microsoft for using "Sky" in the name of their product, which was then Sky Drive. It was then rebranded to OneDrive.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23530337

Though looking at the article if people hadn't been so thick and called Sky when they had an issue with Skydrive (when it was hosted on Microsoft servers) they could have maybe (but unikely) got away with it. But there we are.

Clearly the "SkyNews" brand is owned now by Comcast,...so they dont get to just keep "SkyNews" if if they want to, even if they changed the logo. So all of this remains to be seen what Comcast does when/if this channel global channel launches. Whatever happens it will be interesting to watch.

The difference here is there’s no passing off because Australian News Channel has the written consent of Sky for the use of the Sky News brand.

What we’re talking about here is a hypothetical situation where Sky unilaterally withdraws that consent and Sky News Australia refuses to change its name. And as sure as night follows day a claim by Sky in passing off would surely be followed by a counterclaim by ANC for breach of contract. But it’s all hypothetical anyway and I suspect very unlikely to happen. More likely, if Sky really did want ANC to stop using its brand, Sky would approach ANC with some sort of offer for ANC to change its name in return for some sort of payoff. But it’s all hypothetical. Sky News Australia is over the other side of the world and I’d wager few in Europe who are not particularly interested in the media are aware it even exists, never mind perceive it as doing some sort of damage to Sky’s reputation here. In other words, it’s not bothering Sky and Sky won’t bother it.

Turning back to the OP I’d ask - where would Euronews be in this proposed global news channel? Surely any global news channel would be more likely to be born out of the already international Euronews than the US-centric MSNBC or the widely available but heavily UK focused Sky News. Was not NBC already looking at Euronews as it’s international news channel?

I dont


Maybe in years past Sky on its own wouldn't have made an issue of it but you are leaving NBC/Comcast out of the picture. Clearly they want to control their own brand, so leaving some outlier channel, to continue operating, using one of their wholly-owned brands....cant see it. I doubt they'd have to payout to retain their own trademark without a clause in the contract to withdraw it from use. I personally cant see that arrangement lasting too long. Especially if they are launching global news channel with possibly some combination of the "SkyNBC News" brand. But as you said its all speculation until it happens.

But would be "born" of of either SN/EN/MSNBC? Not sure what you mean exactly. As you said SkyNews and MSNBC are basically domestic news channels, and EuroNews being focused on Europe (as in the title). But they all cover international news, some more than others. Likely will be some sort of conglomeration of all of them. Seeing as Comcast only owns a 25 percent (but seemingly controlling portion) of EuroNews, seems risky to put all the eggs in the EuroNews basket without having full control of it for this possible new venture. They did move Debra Turness back to London to run NBC News International. Maybe something based in London?

This isn't some random company just using the name "Sky News", it's another company who have signed a contract, with terms and conditions for both parties, to licence the Sky News brand . Sure, SkyNBC can renegotiate that contract and end the brand licencing, but they'd be in deep legal water if they just decided to send a cease-and-desist notice to them.

Sky News Australia is also hardly enhancing the brand and is quite controversial in a Fox News kind of way which is something NBC/Comcast may not want to be associated with. Same could be said for Sky News Arabic which is a joint venture with ADMC and from what I have read can hardly be seen as impartial in various Middle East conflicts (Libya civil war and Qatar situation to name just to).