Time and again, billionaires who made fortunes in disparate fields swagger into the media business, only to get punched in the face, if not lower on the body.
If media execs feel depressed at their inability to figure out sustainable models, don’t feel so bad. Outside cable news, the news business itself is not very profitable outside a few exceptions.
#Cnn meme creator punch tv
News itself, for the most part, is entertainment or filler on Gas Station TV with volume on high and the mute button hard to find. It’s personality-driven drama that allows people to root for their team and against the bad guys. The Licht story will mostly be viewed through a different lens: the effort, directed by his boss David Zaslav, to steer CNN to “non-partisan news.” I’d think someone who understands the popularity of Dr Pimple Popper would understand what’s popular in news, and it isn’t dry, on-the-one hand, on-the-other-hand reporting. And media economics only get tougher, just as CPMs only go in one direction that isn’t up. When the future of cable is YouTube, you can be sure the economics are going to be completely different. When only a third of Americans have cable TV, a likely outcome in the next few years, this model crumbles. But with sports programming fragmenting, and even ESPN at risk of going direct, the cable bundle itself could fully unwind. ESPN has long extracted the largest of these fees. Those fees are subsidies, with the costs passed on to people whether they watch the programming or not. The financial success of cable news is mostly down to a sweetheart business model of carriage fees with ads on top. Still, the success of Zaslav’s project will be determined by Max, not whatever becomes of CNN. CNN is still a reliable cash generator, despite a primetime audience that could sometimes fit in a large soccer stadium. The audiences are very old, in the mid 60s. There’s a reason anytime you turn on Fox News or CNN the ads are for pharmaceutical products. Cable news has long held a mostly unearned power considering its shrinking and elderly audience. The Trump bump was an artificial sugar high that wears off. That means the players call the shots, not the coach.īen Smith identified the larger point of the greasy saga of backbiting and egos: Cable news is unraveling, and like most unravelings it goes slowly and then all at once. And cable news is like the NBA, where the coaches don’t make nearly as much as the players. ) In a talent business, he wasn’t popular with the talent. CNN’s Chris Licht began the week as a dead-man walking after a “disastrous” profile in The Atlantic that confirmed much of the existing reporting on his tenure at CNN. Perhaps it’s the toxic cloud hanging over New York the last few days, but I can’t help but feel a similar situation confronts a swathe of the media business. Hearst wasn’t about losing money – and now half its business is in B2B, something I’m discussing with David Carey in an upcoming podcast. Still, the media business done well could generate reliable, steady returns. Some of the brands judged the most successful in previous eras were notorious for their ability to lose money. The media business has often acted as a shiny object to front other less glamorous businesses. The media business has always had outsized influence and place in culture compared to its economic clout.
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