Imagine if the Super Bowl audience dropped by 25%. That’s what happened on Tuesday when Nielsen tallied the viewership for TV networks that provided coverage of former President Trump’s historic electoral victory over Vice President Kamala Harris for the White House.
But election night was just the grand finale of a political season that showed how legacy media organizations are struggling to maintain relevance while alternatives in the digital universe chip away at their influence.
Young viewers are getting information from TikTok, YouTube and Elon Musk’s X, skipping the evening news broadcasts and cable shows as they go without pay TV subscriptions.
Trump largely bypassed traditional media outlets, granting lengthy interviews to comedians such as Theo Von and the influential Joe Rogan, who eventually endorsed the former commander-in-chief. Harris went on podcasts such as Alex Cooper’s popular “Call Her Daddy” and “All the Smoke” with former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson.
The emergence of podcasters is an extension of what has happened in cable news, where the largest audiences are drawn by opinion hosts whom fans treat as tribal leaders. While overall TV ratings were down, the top two networks on election night were Fox News, which draws big ratings with its conservative hosts, and the progressive MSNBC.
“What Joe Rogan tells you is this business has become personality-driven, not journalism-driven,” said a TV news agent who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Meanwhile, newspapers continue to fight an uphill battle to get users to pay for digital content as their print editions fade into obsolescence. Public opinion polling by Gallup shows that trust in mass-media institutions is at a record low.
TV news organizations are still absorbing what Trump’s return will mean to them. Anchors and correspondents are having frank conversations with their agents about how they will navigate another four years covering a president who has a hostile view of journalists.
The public will have more answers in the coming weeks as news organizations use a new White House administration to reassign correspondents. It’s also possible that some conservative news hosts and commentators could end up as part of a new Trump administration.
There’s hope for at least a short-term boost in ratings and readership from another unpredictable Trump administration. Trump’s 2016 victory was the lighter fluid that accelerated a news bonfire, driving ratings and subscription revenue. But a repeat of that effect probably will be ephemeral and won’t make newsgathering a sustainable business in an increasingly fragmented news environment.
Alex Cooper interviews Vice President Kamala Harris on “Call Her Daddy” for an Oct. 6, 2024, episode.
(Call Her Daddy)
“The Trump bump may be a way in,” said Neil Brown, president of the Poynter Institute. “It won’t be a way to keep them unless you find a lasting way to serve them.”
Roland Martin, a former CNN commentator who now owns and operates the digital Black Star Network, believes outlets are counting on a turbocharged news cycle.
“A lot of legacy-media people were pining for Trump’s return because they know it’s going to be a s— show every single day,” Martin said. “It will be another four-year reality show about his craziness.”
Some news executives believe — perhaps wishfully — that the administration will focus on policy at the beginning and there will be less emphasis on the president-elect’s rambunctious personality.
“I think he’s going to be way too busy, especially in the first two years if he has the House and Senate,” Alex Castellanos, chairman of the communications firm Purple Strategies and a former Republican political consultant.
On the campaign trail, Trump promised radical changes, including mass deportations of undocumented migrants and putting vaccine and fluoridated water critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a position of influence over public health.
“It won’t be the obsessive fascination with this novel phenomenon that it was last time,” said Andrew Heyward, a former CBS News president who now advises media companies. “It’ll be based more on news value and therefore there may be less of it and it may not last as long.”
Experts believe that Trump’s better-than-expected performance revealed a larger problem.
They say large media organizations spent too much time in Washington focused on opinion polls and punditry from political professionals and didn’t listen enough to what the electorate was saying on the ground. Outside of right-leaning outlets, media outlets may not have paid enough attention to working-class anger over the cost of living during an otherwise robust economic recovery.
Mainstream news outlets also were slow to see the shift of Latino voters to Trump. Martin attributed it to the lack of Latino journalists or executives in their organizations. He also noted that the media overstated the narrative of Black voters flocking to Trump.
“They were using mainstream white polls and they never put Black-specific pollsters on the air,” Martin said. “And Black men congregate in other places than barber shops.”
Fox News was criticized several years ago for its aggressive coverage of the influx of migrants at the U.S.’ southern border, but the reporting foretold the emergence of immigration as a major issue in the 2024 presidential campaign. The story did not get significant attention from its competitors until migrants were bused into major media centers such as New York.
Criticism that corporate-owned media outlets don’t get deep enough into diverse communities or a wider range of issues has gone on for years. Addressing the problem is more difficult as the organizations come under greater pressure to cut costs and deal with declining revenue.
“We’re in a changing world and everybody knows it,” Heyward said. “Unfortunately it’s a time of restricted resources. That means deciding what can we afford to do very well to serve a unique role in this much more complicated landscape.”
Aside from increased competition, media companies are seeing advertisers become more skittish about running their ads in news programming, as they are turned off by the vitriol and divisiveness in the current polarized political landscape. Scripps News cited the attitude as a factor in its recent decision to shut down its 24-hour news service.
Presidential campaigns fully took advantage of the upheaval, calling their own shots on the debates — there was only one between Trump and Harris — and being more selective in their formal media appearances.
“The candidates were able to control the relationship with legacy media, perhaps more than in previous cycles, by either going around them or controlling the drip of when they would give them interviews,” said Joshua Darr, senior researcher at Syracuse University’s Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship.
President Trump reached nearly 40 million viewers in the first three days after his interview with podcaster Joe Rogan became available on YouTube.
(Evan Vucci / Associated Press, left; Gregory Payan / Associated Press, right)
There is no penalty for avoiding tough media platforms when there are so many options to reach pockets of voters on alternative outlets, Heyward said. Rogan’s interview with Trump received nearly 40 million views in its first three days on YouTube.
“‘60 Minutes’ has been the No. 1 TV news program for five decades, but Trump had no problem not only skipping it but suing it,” said Heyward, referring to the $10-billion lawsuit Trump filed against the network over its editing of a Harris interview answer on the CBS News magazine show. Trump initially agreed to an interview on the show but then canceled his appearance.
While loyalty to legacy media and a sense of public connection to these organizations have declined, media experts said there is still power in these longtime brands. Harris went on “The View,” did an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, sat for a grilling by Fox News’ Bret Baier and did local media in battleground states. Her appearances on traditional networks got millions of views.
“Legacy media continue to be vital, and there’s nothing about this result that changes that at all,” said the Poynter Institute’s Brown. “I believe fully that the legacy media have the credibility and institutional connection to their communities, that they provide a profound service.”