Once-trusted "mainstream" media networks experience significant losses in audiences and revenue after facing credibility challenges following Donald Trump’s public landslide reelection, which they desperately tried to undermine with overwhelmingly biased reporting and commentary.
Big losers were MSNBC whose primetime cable audience, according to Nielsen ratings data, plunged more than half (53%) since the week before the election, and CNN which lost 39% over the same period.
Conservative Fox News has retained its previous primetime television audience, holding at about 2.7 million viewers following an election night audience of about 10 million.
Fox election coverage numbers grabbed 69% of total day cable news viewership during the seven-day period that began on November 11, and 72% during prime time.
Fox prime time was followed by MSNBC with approximately 6 million logged, and CNN at about 5 million.
Newsmax was fourth during prime time at 287,000, leading NewsNation (113,000), CNBC (106,000), and Fox Business (77,000).
According to a recent Gallup study, fewer than a third of Americans hold a “great deal” or “fair amount” of faith in the media to report news accurately.
When asked how much trust and confidence they had in the media, nearly 70% of respondents said either "not very much" or "none at all,” with the latter ranking a staggering 17 points lower than Congress.
Truth be known, so-called “legacy media” began losing public confidence and respect long before former President Donald Trump successfully rebranded it with large segments of the country as “fake media.”
Public trust percentage ratings have fallen from the high 60s to low 70s since Gallup first asked the question in 1972, to low to mid-50s in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The last time Gallup’s survey found a majority of respondents having a great deal or fair amount of media confidence was 2003.
Until recently — when many liberal viewers have apparently abandoned legacy news outlets — about 54% of Democrats, 27% of independents and 12% of Republicans report a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media.
So when and why did this wholesale lack of faith occur?
Perhaps it had lots to do with ultimate exposure of the legacy media coverup of scandalous and criminal information contained in Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” that the FBI sat on throughout the 2020 election which network and social media collaboratively dismissed with 51 former intel officials and the White House as likely “Russian disinformation.”
Or maybe the big credibility cascade began back in March — before the presidential debate from hell — when MSNBC host Joe Scarborough went on a familiar rant claiming that President Biden was at the top of his game: "Start your tape right now, because I'm about to tell you the truth. ... This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever."
Scarborough and Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinksi sparked spectacular social media backlash and a precipitous dip in viewership immediately after their pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago following the election, dropping to 647,000 compared to a yearly average of 1.09 million according to the Associated Press.
Some will recall that this occurred after Joe’s lack of mental fitness was on full display in April 2022 when a White House staffer in an Easter Bunny costume intervened to move Biden away from inquiring reporters.
Others might have observed how liberal media repeatedly allowed President Biden to make numerous false claims about Trump’s comments, including regarding the Charlottesville protests … or how ABC’s moderators only fact-checked former President Donald Trump during the debate with Vice President Kamala Harris while giving her a pass.
Still others reacted negatively to hypocrisy in ignoring blatant lawfare to remove Trump from state ballots, bankrupt, and even imprison him while charging him as a “threat to democracy.”
Many didn’t like media commentary suggesting he is a fascist — as the FBI investigated parents protesting indoctrination of their children with age-inappropriate sexual materials and divisive Critical Race Theory propaganda sponsored by the New York Times.
Billionaire free speech advocate Elon Musk expressed special disdain for MSNBC as “utter scum of the earth” on X for pointing out that Trump’s massive October campaign event at Madison Square Garden was the site of a 1939 Nazi rally.
Musk also declared to his 200 million viewers on X that the media is all but dead and “you are the media now.”
As for adding MSNBC to his Twitter media portfolio to reform, we can presently only dream.
in response to a teasing X post reshared by Donald Trump Jr. regarding a false report that Comcast plans to put MSNBC up for sale, Musk tweeted “how much does it cost?”
Although Comcast has announced plans to spin off NBCUniversal’s cable networks into a separate company, the company apparently isn’t interested in selling any individual channels or other assets.
But then again Elon, why not give it a shot?
Even a pennies on the dollar offer for MSNBC might at least relieve Comcast of funeral expenses.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.