As Legacy Media Struggles, The Business Is Now Personality Driven

Imagine if the Super Bowl audience dropped by 25%. That’s what happened 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, reports The LA Times,  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 president. 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.

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 polarized political landscape.