Alies founded America's Talking, with people who would go on to do Fox News and MSNBC shows (including probably most prominently Chris Matthews, whose show is still going). MSNBC bought the satellite and kept the format and a lot of talent.
Right, but as Rumbler also infers, MSNBC of 1996 was a much different animal than MSNBC 2018, or even 2008.
Aisles took a lot of talent with him to Fox, some stayed on, most are not around today. Heck most weren't around very long on MSNBC either.
They were sort of lost at sea early on, couldn't find a niche or attract an audience. Eventually they tried to basically be like Fox for a while(which to be fair, as I said, both cable news stations adopted their structure of casting off long-form journalism/employing large staffs of reporters in favor of low or non-paid commentators, personalities, pundits, and sensationalism). MSNBC just went basically full conservative pandering hiring Tucker, Buchanan, Keyes and playing into that post-911 right-wing jingoism.