Charlie Tillinghast, president of MSNBC.com says that having the website and the news channel sharing the same name "is brand insanity," reports the New York Times’ Media Decoder blog.

Thus NBC Universal and Microsoft are discussing changing the name of MSNBC.com, the objective news site they co-own and which shares the name of the liberal-leaning cable channel, according internal memos obtained Media Decoder, the article says. 

The problem is that because the Web site and the cable channel share a name, they are widely confused even though they are separate companies, the story points out. “Both strategies are fine, but naming them the same thing is brand insanity," wrote MSNBC.com president Charlie Tillinghast in a memo in March.

Under a current plan, the MSNBC.com Web address would become a site only for the cable channel, while the existing news site would move to a new and as-yet-unnamed Web address, the article says. According to memos and interviews, the companies are testing new names as well as considering NBCNews.com, which would rely on a recognized name, the story notes.