Broadcast TV Is Dying. Trump Is Threatening It Anyway

The belt-tightening has already hit one other large cash driver of community TV: the morning present. In early January, Hoda Kotb left the At present present after 17 years. The printed journalist was reportedly making greater than $20 million a yr as a number, and NBC simply didn’t need to hold paying that. That’s additionally why the community axed the band on Late Evening With Seth Meyers and dropped the variety of weekly episodes of The Tonight Present With Jimmy Fallon from 5 to 4. They’re all indicators of what Selection referred to as “TV’s new austerity push.”

“We do have audiences going to completely different locations to observe their programming,” one agent instructed Selection. “A lot of these entities are seeing their revenues decline. That’s only a truth of life.”

However with broadcast TV’s viewers now fractured throughout streaming, cable, and social media, why is Donald Trump threatening its existence? “This can be a political cudgel getting used towards nationwide information networks,” says David Greene, civil liberties director on the Digital Frontier Basis. Greene famous that Trump’s ire was targeted extra on nationwide information retailers than the native stations that truly possess the published licenses.

Some networks do personal native stations. Paramount, which additionally produces CBS’s 60 Minutes, owns a handful, and was even exploring promoting 12 of them again in August earlier than Trump lobbed his newest threats towards the community. However after I requested Oberman about these threats, she mentioned she hadn’t “actually heard it was an space of concern” for the trade. “If something the incoming administration is extra pro-friendly to the broadcasters.”

Perry Sook, the CEO of Nexstar, the biggest tv station proprietor within the US, is hopeful that the brand new administration will take away guidelines capping the variety of native stations an organization can personal. On a November 2024 earnings name, Sook clearly acknowledged what sort of journalism he’d wish to see on these stations. “[I]t appears as if there could also be a kinder, gentler consensus rising, that possibly fact-based journalism will come again into vogue, in addition to eliminating the extent of activist journalism on the market,” he mentioned on the decision.

Sinclair, the second largest proprietor of TV stations within the US, can also be longing for extra consolidation, and has gained a fame for steering its native stations to cowl the information with a POV extra in step with Sinclair’s personal conservative political leanings. Sinclair was the topic of a 2018 viral video that confirmed dozens of newscasters from throughout the US studying the very same script criticizing the media that repeated widespread conservative speaking factors.

However the Trump administration and the large homeowners of broadcast licenses aren’t simply pleasant due to their shared political leanings. In keeping with Orman, native stations additionally are likely to have higher attain relating to political promoting. “Digital doesn’t appear to be giving political advertisers the return they’re anticipating, and TV nonetheless appears to offer that,” Orman instructed Advert Exchanger late final yr. Broadcast TV really noticed its advert income improve by 9 p.c in 2024, an uptick due totally to elevated spending on political adverts through the main election cycle.

With the election within the rearview, that advert cash is drying up. And with viewership fading and streaming outspending the networks hand over fist, one of many world’s oldest media establishments has its again towards the wall. Even when the incoming administration fails to make good on its promise to punish media retailers that run tales it finds offensive, broadcast TV is coming into a interval of existential uncertainty.

“Broadcast is so weak proper now,” says the EFF’s Greene, “any menace towards it appears to be a hazard.”