The collapse of the corporate media

When it comes to cable TV news ratings, it’s usually easy come, easy go. Some days you are up, and some days you are down. That’s the nature of the business. But what has happened to liberal-leftish MSNBC since Donald Trump’s election victory a few weeks ago is looking less like a rollercoaster ride, and more like a fall from an aeroplane without a parachute.

‘MSNBC has averaged 550,000 viewers since election day’, the New York Times reported last week, ‘a 39 per cent decline compared with the network’s average in October’. ‘In prime time, MSNBC’s audience has declined 53 per cent, according to the Nielsen data.’

This certainly sounds like a death rattle. And if you drill down into the numbers, the picture is even worse. The corpse is starting to smell.

According to Adweek numbers, MSNBC’s prime-time lineup last week averaged a total of 684,000 viewers. Among the key demographic of 25- to 54-year-olds, that number was just 65,000. In comparison, conservative Fox News averaged 1.8million total viewers during prime-time last week, and 236,000 among 25- to 54-year-olds.

For more context, over on YouTube, former corporate cable-news host Megyn Kelly’s daily show regularly pulls in between 800,000 and 200,000 views per episode. This is not just about more viewers migrating to web platforms instead of watching cable in the living room, either. For example, a segment this week from MSNBC host Joy Reid’s The ReidOut, warning about the ‘authoritarian’ threat posed by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, is sitting at just under 30,000 views a day after being posted. It’s not the medium that’s the problem for MSNBC. It’s the message.

As the election result showed, Americans clearly were not buying the message. Still, the election alone wouldn’t have proved so fatal had the network not been so relentlessly one-sided. Day in, day out, it kept up a steady stream of anti-Trump hysteria and pro-Democrat propaganda. Those who relied on MSNBC’s election coverage will have been so shocked and demoralised by a result that they hadn’t even considered possible. MSNBC failed in its basic duty to keep viewers informed. It’s no wonder so many have now left the channel behind.

The corporate executives who run things behind the scenes have noticed this and are making big changes. This week, Adweek reported that MSNBC will be splitting from the broader NBC News umbrella. Starting in 2025, it will be part of a new company called – and I’m not making this up – SpinCo. It’ll be led by an executive called – and I’m also not making this up – Mark Lazarus.

Can Lazarus raise this bloated carcass from the dead? We’ll see. But for now, the talking heads of the establishment left are in a real pickle. The star anchors do not know which way to turn. Having spent nigh-on eight years setting their hair on fire about Trump being the new Hitler – and helping to radicalise their audience in the process – they now must reckon with his decisive win.

Two of the biggest stars in this shabby firmament, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, took the most controversial and surprising tack of all. Last week, they travelled down to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump. ‘Why wouldn’t we?’, Mika blithely asked her gobsmacked viewers. ‘Uh, because you said he was Hitler’, The Daily Show host Jon Stewart replied.

Many liberal tears were shed in response. It was a ‘crushing betrayal’, according to the Wrap. ‘Joe Scarborough has always been a political whore’, wrote the increasingly deranged Keith Olbermann.

I mean, fair play to Mika and Joe for being so brazen. I would certainly find it very difficult, if not impossible, to go kiss the ass of a man who I had spent years lambasting as being the worst person on Earth.

American presidential politics has always been a circus. This is why an over-the-top showman like Trump has excelled at it. He is ratings gold. The po-faced libs and establishment Republicans never came close to matching his sheer entertainment value, if nothing else. Exhibit A: Trump’s post about Brzezinski and Scarborough’s visit on his social-media network, Truth Social:

‘[Scarborough] approached me like a scolded dog. He should consider himself lucky that I didn’t have him thrown out of beautiful Mar-a-Lago. Mika was charming, as usual.’

For Scarborough and Co, regaining viewers’ trust will be a painful process. But in the American media-political complex, the show must always go on.

Jenny Holland is a former newspaper reporter and speechwriter. Visit her Substack here.