Broadcast TV Is Dying. Trump Is Threatening It Anyway

Belt-tightening has already hit another big money driver for network TV: the morning show. In early January, Hoda left Kotb today Show after 17 years. The broadcast journalist was making more than $20 million a year as a host, and NBC simply didn’t want to pay that. That’s why the network dropped the band Late Night with Seth Meyers And its weekly episode count has decreased The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon From five to four. These are all signs of what Variety calls “TV’s new austerity push.”

“Our viewers are going to different places to watch their programming,” an agent told Variety. “A number of these entities are seeing their revenues decline. It’s just a fact of life.”

But why is the broadcast TV audience now fragmented across streaming, cable and social media? Donald Trump Threaten its existence? “This is a political slur being used against a national news network,” said David Green, director of civil liberties at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Green noted that Trump’s ire was focused more on national news outlets than on local stations that actually hold broadcast licenses.

Some networks have their own local stations. Paramount, which also produces for CBS 60 minutesA handful were owned, and even explored 12 of them are selling Back in August earlier Trump is his latest threat to the network. But when I asked Oberman about these threats, he said he “hadn’t really heard it was an area of ​​concern for the industry”. “If anything the incoming administration is friendlier to broadcasters.”

Perry Suk, CEO of Nextstar, the largest U.S. television station owner, is hopeful that the new administration will remove rules that limit the number of local stations a company can own. on A November 2024 earnings callSuk has clearly stated what kind of journalism he wants to see on these stations. “[I]”There seems to be a kinder, gentler consensus emerging, that maybe truth-based journalism will come back into vogue, as well as eliminate that layer of activist journalism,” he said on the call.

Sinclair, the second-largest owner of TV stations in the U.S., is also keen on further consolidation, and has a reputation for instructing local stations to cover the news with a POV consistent with that. Sinclair’s own conservative political leanings. Sinclair was a subject 2018 Viral Video Which showed that dozens of newscasters across the US were reading the exact same script criticizing the media that repeated the usual conservative talking points.

But the Trump administration and the big owners of broadcast licenses are not on friendly terms because of their shared political leanings. According to Orman, local stations tend to have better reach when it comes to political advertising. “Digital doesn’t seem to be delivering the returns political advertisers expect, and TV still seems to be,” Orman said. told AdExchanger late last year. Broadcast TV actually saw its ad revenue grow 9 percent in 2024, an increase entirely due to increased spending on political ads during key election cycles.

With the election in the rearview, ad dollars are drying up. And with viewership plummeting and streaming handing over the networks, one of the world’s oldest media institutions has its back against the wall. Even if the incoming administration fails to fulfill its promise to punish media outlets it deems offensive, broadcast TV is entering a period of existential uncertainty.

“Broadcasting is very vulnerable right now,” EFF’s Green said, “any threat against it seems dangerous.”