What the Huffington Post story doesn't cover is
why Beck had to create his own media "empire" instead of staying in the protected bubble of Fox News and News Corp. He was fired, canned, pushed out, let go, contract not renewed, left to spend more time crying with his family or whatever euphemism is used these days. News Corp gave all sorts of lame reasons, but the documented fact that he stopped bringing in ad revenue for News Corp is a huge part of why he is off Fox.
And the
reason ad revenue disappeared is because of the incredible work of my friends at
Color of Change,
Angelo Carusone of @stopbeck (now at Media Matters) and all of their supporters. They convinced advertisers to not associate their brand with Beck's race baiting and craziness.
This decoupling of consumer goods advertisers from conservative media is a really big deal. It's something that I and a legion of people have been working on for over a decade. The success of my friends in the #stoprush group alone is absolutely phenomenal.
We've found that in general advertisers don't like to support racist, sexist bigots. There are some exceptions, especially those whose audience sees being called a sexist bigot a compliment.
The reason I developed the Spocko Method to defund right-wing media was because while I knew there are plenty of people who will happily
consume racist, sexist claptrap, I also knew that the women and men running consumer businesses do
not want to be
publicly associated with it. Using these people's desire to protect their brand has led to a massive loss of revenue to right-wing media distributors.
Right-wing radio and TV hosts like Limbaugh and Beck have gone from cash generating assets, to consumer brand damaging liabilities.
If Trump decides to start a media company he will be competing with Fox News and other networks for advertisers, many of whom pressured those media companies to not associate their brand with Trump.
- Are the thousands of advertisers who left Limbaugh because of his sexist comments about women going to want to be associated with Trump News?
- Will the hundreds of advertisers who said, "Take us off race-baiter Beck's show!" flock to the network of Donald "Mexicans are rapists and women are pigs" Trump?
This does not mean that a "Trump News" wouldn't have tremendous traffic like Glenn Beck did. In the beginning Trump will be able to generate huge traffic, but not necessarily ad revenue. And traffic alone
might be enough for Trump, especially if it is the
only metric that he reveals. But the idea pushed by conservatives to the mainstream media and the liberal media is that if you don't generate revenue it's not really a success. Of course the same metric doesn't exist for right-wing media.
The possibility of a popular, but money losing, Trump network should concern us and remind us of another media model that is glossed over. It currently exists and it shapes "conventional wisdom." It's the "purposely lose millions in your news divisions to push an agenda" model. As an example, did you
know that the New York Post LOSES around $110 MILLION dollars a year, every year?
This is the Murdoch model. He uses his money-losing properties, often newspapers, to punish his enemies and threaten the people who disagree with him and his views. He uses all his properties to push the "no-taxes on the rich, no trust busting, no regulation" views.
And he's not the only rich right winger who throws bad money after bad to push extreme conservative views in the media, often times by
the media. Were you aware that the Washington Times