Broadcast TV Is Dying. Trump is threatened anyway

Belt-tightening has already hit another engine of network TV money: the morning show. In early January, Hoda Kotb left the Today show after 17 years. The broadcast journalist said he was making more than $20 million a year as a host, and NBC didn’t want to continue paying him that. This is also why the network axed the band on Late Night with Seth Meyers and dropped the number of weekly episodes of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon from five to four. They are all signs of what Variety called “TV’s new austerity drive.”

“We have audiences going to different places to watch their programming,” an agent said Variety. “A number of these entities see their revenues decrease. It’s just a fact of life.”

But with the broadcast TV audience now fractured into streaming, cable, and social media, why is it Donald Trump does it threaten their existence? “(H)is a political cudgel used against national news networks,” says David Greene, Director of Civil Liberties at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Greene noted that Trump’s ire was more focused on national news than the local stations that actually own the broadcast licenses.

Some networks have their own local stations. Paramount, which also produces CBS 60 minutesowned a handful, and was also explored they sell 12 of them back in August first Trump launched his latest threats towards the net. But when I asked Oberman about those threats, he said he hadn’t “really heard it was an area of ​​concern” for the industry. “If anything, the incoming administration is more favorable to broadcasters.”

Perry Sook, the CEO of Nexstar, the largest television station owner in the United States, hoped the new administration would eliminate rules that limit the number of local stations a company can own. Hon a November 2024 earnings callSook made it clear what kind of journalism he would like to see on those stations. “(It) seems to me that there may be a kinder, kinder consensus emerging, that maybe fact-based journalism will come back into vogue, and even eliminate the level of activist journalism here,” he said on the call.

Sinclair, the second largest owner of TV stations in the United States, is also eager for further consolidation, and has gained a reputation for directing its local stations to cover the news with a POV more in line with Sinclair’s conservative political leanings. Sinclair was the subject of a Viral video 2018 which showed dozens of journalists from all over the United States reading the exact same script criticizing the media for repeating common conservative talking points.

But the Trump administration and the big owners of broadcast licenses aren’t just friendly because of their shared political leanings. According to Orman, local stations also tend to have better reach when it comes to political advertising. “(D)digital doesn’t seem to be giving political ads the return they expect, and TV still seems to be giving that,” Orman. he told Ad Exchanger late last year. Broadcast TV actually saw its ad revenue rise 9 percent in 2024, an increase due entirely to increased political ad spending during the major election cycle.

With the election in the rear view, that ad money is drying up. And with viewership dying off and streaming outspending the networks hand over fist, one of the world’s oldest media institutions has its back against the wall. Even if the incoming administration fails to keep its promise to punish media outlets that cover stories it finds offensive, broadcast TV is entering a period of existential uncertainty.

“Broadcasting is so vulnerable right now,” says EFF’s Greene, “any threat against it seems to be a danger.”