MS NOW Will Make Two Local Watch Parties Part of Election Night Coverage

Look for MS NOW to offer a little red and purple as it chronicles what may be a blue splash on Election Night.

The Versant Media-backed news outlet will hold forth from special watch parties of its own design in Houston, Texas and Atlanta, Georgia, where it will offer followers in those states a chance to hang out at a Members Lounge and meet up with other subscribers to the network’s new subscription streaming service.

“Our MS NOW Members Lounges let us bring our growing MS NOW community together IRL, especially in these huge moments when politics and culture dominate the national moment,” says Marcus Mabry, senior vice president of content strategy at MS NOW, in a statement sent via email. “They’re a powerful extension of the connection our Members have already found with our journalists and each other.”

The gatherings, held at Atlanta’s Painted Pin, a boutique bowling alley and entertainment venue in the city’s Buckhead neighborhood, and Houston’s Rooftop Cinema Club, represent a way for MS NOW to burnish its nascent streaming property, which launched in September. The service offers not bespoke MS NOW programming, but also interactive sessions with some of the outlet’s best-known anchors and reporters, and executives are eager to introduce tools that help members find one another as well as valuable news and information.

Antonia Hylton, anchor of the new weekend program “The Assignment,” will report live from the watch party in Atlanta, while Alicia Menendez, anchor of “On the Line,” will be stationed at the watch party in Houston. The live reports aim to blend local perspectives with MS NOW’s coverage on Election Night, which will be led by Rachel Maddow starting at 6 p.m. on the outlet’s linear network.

MS NOW previously backed Members Lounges in September, with the first one open in Dallas during the Republican National Convention. In October, a lounge was featured at the Power to the People concert in Maryland.