Those who watched what they could bear of post-election TV news coverage might have noticed an undercurrent of dejection among the talking heads stemming not just from the results, but what the 2024 campaign made painfully obvious: legacy media, and even its biggest stars, just don’t matter like they did four, let alone 24, years ago.
A guest on Kasie Hunt’s CNN program somehow seemed to startle, or at least dismay, the host when he pointed out that Joe Rogan’s podcast has a bigger audience than ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, CNBC, Fox News and MSNBC combined. But that element of surprise is waning.
The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel examines this sea change in media consumption in a somber piece that falls short of being an obituary. The shift has been underway since at least the dawn of social media, he rightly points out. But over the past year it’s made things unrecognizably atomized. These days, many don’t even recognize what a media diet consists of.
“A defining quality of this election cycle has been that few people seem to be able to agree on who constitutes ‘the media,’” Warzel writes. “There’s broad confusion over what actually moves the needle. Is the press the bulwark against fascism, or is it ignored by a meaningful percentage of the country? It is certainly beleaguered by a conservative effort to undermine media institutions, with Trump as its champion and the fracturing caused by algorithmic social media.”
Warzel doesn’t offer concrete solutions for the future. None exist for now. But he does recognize a need for increased zeal, quality and dedication to the truth to counter the at times “existential feel of competing for attention and reckoning with the truth that many Americans don’t read, trust, or really care all that much about what papers, magazines, or cable news have to say.
Fox News Defies Odds to Dominate Cable US Election Coverage
The FT’s Anna Nicolaou strikes a similar chord in her piece on the resilience of Fox News, which along with the New York Time is the sole marquee outlet to have felt a “Trump Bump” similar to 2016’s. Fox News was the second highest rated network in America last quarter, trailing only NBC, which during that period enjoyed a massive Olympics boost. Shares have soared 50% this year, its parent company’s profits doubled in the latest quarter and the group is now valued at $18 billion.
Meanwhile, Comcast recently described MSNBC as one of its “more mature businesses” that it’s considering spinning off. LightShed analyst Rich Greenfield is speaking the truth when he says, “You can’t overemphasize how radical the transformation has been in audience habits. There’s been exponential change just in the past eight years.”
