I stumbled across this article in the Atlantic: Right Wing Media Are in Trouble.
As usual, the "media" was HALF right.
Just a few months ago, we pointed out that many Left Wing Outlets were bleeding money, including CNN, the Daily Beast and Mother Jones. And since we wrote that article at Beacon of Speech, two of the biggest New Media companies are floating at the top of the tank, both Buzzfeed News and Vice are toast.
So Right Wing Media are in trouble? Y'all are in trouble.
Here's the deal with the Left though, let's take NBC News as an example. NBC News doesn't have to make money. It is simply a subsidiary of NBC. If the rest of NBC makes a boat full of money, the news division can afford to lose money year in and year out. Has NBC News carried NBC with all the money they've MADE? Not in this generation.
And I hate to say it, but the Daily Wire has really figured that formula out on the Right. If your movies and television content make money, it begins to become irrelevant if your news division makes money. They may not be there yet, but they are trying to work the NBC, CBS, ABC, & Fox template.
Unless you're running a very tight ship, it's hard to be a news-only entity in this environment because the national news business is saturated.
You say the marketplace dictates whether news is at the saturation point? What is happening is the WalMart-ization of the News Business.
When WalMart started, they would move into a small town and kill the local competition. All of a sudden, WalMart grew and grew and local independent vendors shrank and shrank. Soon after, other stores became national fixtures. Now, in neighboring cities around my home, you have WalMart, Target, Menards, Marc's, Meijer, and CostCo. I didn't even mention any of the multiple Dollar Store options. National imprints now drive the business model.
So as local news dies, the national imprints duke it out. Eventually some on the Left will collapse and some on the Right will collapse. At the Atlantic, they are gleeful that some on the Right will fail, while remaining silent when those on the Left disintegrate. The Drudge Report keeps nudging toward the middle for its share of the marketplace.
Editor's Note: The Atlantic itself lost $20 million at the beginning of the Pandemic. How can they absorb 8-digit losses? Because they are owned by a billionaire who believes in their mission.
But as there is a thinning of the herd on the national level, will there be a regeneration of growth on the regional level?
I don't know. Is there a growth of niche stores between the cracks of the national retail chains?
Now it's not a perfect analogy, there's no wealthy benefactors buying aging retail stores keeping them alive....