The 2024 election sent serious shock waves through the badly named "mainstream media." The American mainstream has rejected the Democrat media establishment, finding them untrustworthy to "save democracy." It's more like arrogantly manipulating democracy. They through every rock and every kitchen sink at Donald Trump, and they lost. Is it time to say goodbye?
Here’s a collection of recent media headlines:.
MSNBC, CNN Halt Post-Election Swoons, But Fox News Stays Way Out in Front in January
CNN lays off hundreds of employees and replaces Jim Acosta as it restructures network amid falling ratings
CNN And MSNBC Ratings Plunge By Half, Reaching 30-Year Lows – And Billionaires Are Paying Attention
The Yahoo Finance story opens by reporting:
CNN And MSNBC Ratings Slashed In Half, Collapse To Their Lowest Levels In Nearly 30 Years With Billionaires Circling
The political media landscape is undergoing a dramatic shake-up. CNN and MSNBC, two of the biggest cable news networks, are facing historic ratings declines, with their viewership slashed nearly in half since the recent presidential election. Both networks struggle to retain their audiences, collapsing to levels not seen in nearly 30 years. Meanwhile, Fox News has held steady, dominating the cable news space.
Viewership in Freefall
MSNBC’s prime-time audience has taken a staggering 53% hit, dropping from 1.34 million viewers before the election to just 632,000. CNN hasn't fared much better, losing 47% of its prime-time viewers, down to 398,000. On some nights, these networks aren't just losing to Fox News – they're losing to lifestyle channels like the Food Network, where more viewers are tuning into shows like Chopped than CNN's Anderson Cooper or MSNBC's Jen Psaki.
Then there was this on Newsmax from August of 2024:( And full disclosure, I am a Newsmax contributor.):
Newsmax Broke Ratings Records in July
Now.
Pull up to the proverbial 30,000 mile marker and take a good hard look at what is happening to the so-called “Mainstream Media” in America. And with that done there is an increasingly inescapable conclusion.
Namely: The Mainstream Media - aka the liberal media in America - is in the middle of a slow-motion collapse. Ratings are sinking. Staff are being let go. Over there at CNN one of the network’s star anchors - Jim Acosta - is out the door. Gone.
Meanwhile, as indicated above, straight-news or conservative networks are on the rise. Even more interesting is the advent of modern technology and the surge of what we have come to call the “podcast.”
Were one to have access to the proverbial time travel machine and could shoot forward a dozen years, one can honestly wonder whether the likes of CNN, MSNBC and the three “mainstream network” nightly news broadcasts - not to mention the flagship lefty newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post and others will even still exist. Or at least exist in their current form.
And speaking of hopping in the time travel machine, put the machine in reverse and go backwards in time. Back…back…back to, a year not at random, 1955.
Why 1955, you ask?
It was in 1955 that a rising conservative named William F. Buckley Jr. created a not-in-the-progressive-mainstream magazine known as National Review. Unrealized at the time was that Buckley’s magazine was the opening shot in what would, over time, become a conservative media revolution.
Over time as the future opened up the door, what was opened with a trickle became a flood of conservative media outlets, whether in print form or, with the rise of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and others, talk radio. Then came Fox News. Next came Newsmax. News Nation.
Now come the new technology of podcasts.
To show just how far podcasts - and conservative podcasts specifically - have multiplied, swimming along in the flood of information on the topic is this website titled 100 Best Conservative Podcasts.
That’s right-100 of them. With even more out there. On that list of 100, among others, can be found listings for conservative podcast stars with names like Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Daniel Horowitz, Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson, Charlie Kirk, Steve Deace and more. Many more.
Connect the dots from the conservative podcasts and the online conservative sites (such as NewsBusters right here) and one can see in, as it were, black and white, just why the ratings for those once seemingly immutable “mainstream” liberal media are sinking, shedding staff and, one suspects, advertisers as well.
Once done it is reasonable to ask how much longer these once mainstream liberal media juggernauts can survive in their current form or power positions. Or, alternatively, are they destined to simply shrink over time, never again to regain the status they once had as liberal media giants ruling the American (and global!) media universe.
Which brings us back to those opening headlines. Headlines that, unrecognized at this moment, may well in the future be seen as harbingers of a decidedly major shift in the American media environment.
With more headlines like this one here:
CNN anchor Jim Acosta will exit network after turning down midnight shift
So there goes Jim Acosta. The question is: what else -and who else - in the liberal media is headed out the door right behind him. And is the Acosta departure yet another signal of the collapse of the “mainstream” liberal media?
Stay tuned.
