[somenameforme]

I don't think most people understand how the times have changed here. CNN's prime time shows get fewer views than a mid-tier YouTuber, literally. They hit < 1mil at prime time. And their demographic is, again literally, dying off as they have a median viewer age of 67 [1], which is steadily increasing presumably due to a lack of new viewers. On the bright side for them that puts them on the 'younger' side of most cable news networks.

Cable news is basically dead, but I think most of us missed the funeral. It used to be a relatively big deal decades ago, but those times are long since passed.

[1] - https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...

[applfanboysbgon]

> a mid-tier YouTuber, literally. They hit < 1mil at prime time.

By "mid-tier YouTuber", I suppose you mean a top 0.00001% youtuber or thereabouts? Only the top 100ish with 50m+ subscribers translate to an actual audience per video of 1m+ (outliers notwithstanding), and you're comparing a US news network against an entertainment platform with a global audience of billions. I'm going to guess that CNN is still more influential to US politics than a gaming channel in India or Indonesia, even if a few of the latter get more views. Not to say that cable news influence hasn't waned from its peak, obviously, but I don't think the comparison to "mid-tier Youtubers" really holds up at all.

[somenameforme]

I don't think your numbers are reasonable. Widespread use of fake subscription services distorts things but plenty of people get CNN level views with orders of magnitude fewer than 50 million subs. Here [1] is an account whose median view is CNN prime-time level. She has 186k subs.

Beyond that it's a power law distribution. Some guy who uploaded 1 video for a friend counts as a 'YouTuber', but obviously they do not matter in terms of overall competition. We're only talking about the channels that are regularly uploading content of some reasonable standard. And amongst that group - CNN level is very much in the mid-tier range, and I think that's being generous. There are currently about 70k channels with at least a million subs.

As for influence, I don't think news has much of any influence at all in US politics anymore. They blew it all by going hyper-partisan for the sake of views - moderate short to mid-term gains for catastrophic long-term consequences. Pretty much the standard of most US businesses now a days. In terms of confidence in institutions, television news now ranks lower than every measured institution, except Congress. [2] They scored 11%, Congress scored 10%. And that's with piggy-backing off the phrasing of simply "television news" from the poll, instead of just cable news. Broadcast news is going to score significantly higher in confidence than cable news.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/@andreabotezmusic/videos

[2] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.as...

[DEADMEAT]

About 28% of the people who voted in November 2024 are over 65.

https://www.kff.org/state-health-policy-data/state-indicator...

[somenameforme]

I think people typically flip the causality here. People's voting isn't determined by their media habits, but rather their media habits are determined by their voting. For instance in these cable news discussions, Fox is often a huge target. But if you covertly turned Fox into the NYTimes tomorrow, you'd have 0 impact on election outcomes. All you'd end up doing is creating a vacuum that'd probably be filled by OANN or another similar network.

Tucker Carlson is another great example. There was a segment of people who were loudly rejoicing after he was fired from Fox. But it predictably had a less than zero effect on his visibility, as he now gets vastly more viewers than he did on Fox by running his segments independently. People weren't watching Tucker because of Fox, they were watching Fox because of Tucker. And, in turn, the people watching Tucker aren't just adopting his views - but rather tend to watch him because they have comparable worldviews themselves. If his worldview suddenly turned into that of Rachel Maddow overnight, all that'd happen is his viewership would also trend to zero.

---

Just think about yourself. Do you honestly think you're going to go start supporting the current administration if you just freebased a few thousand hours of Fox, OANN, or whatever else? Our fundamental views are shaped very slowly and more from things like life experience than headlines, which is a big part of the reason that age is such a large factor in typical ideology.

[jfengel]

It goes both ways; there's a feedback. People start watching a channel because they're predisposed to agree with it, but when the channel constantly reinforces their biases, it foes from a slight predisposition to a strong opinion to an absolute certainty.

Fox News doesn't just give a conservative opinion on events, but constantly asserts that every other information source is wrong. Not just wrong, in fact, but a deliberate attempt to con them.

You're correct that eliminating Fox News would not, in itself, end that process. They've had decades to reinforce their views. It may well be inescapable at this point.

But OANN isn't as slick as Fox News. It doesn't attract people with a predisposition; it's more likely to turn them off. If Fox News were to disappear, and OANN expand to fill its space, it might eventually reduce the number of people drawn into that self-reinforcing mechanism.

[tedd4u]

Don't forget Ellison/Skydance also control TikTok, where according to Pew 38% of adult Americans get their news.

The internet has killed institutions of journalism that have a reputation to protect. Billionaires did the rest of the job (RIP Washington Post). Pretty bad outcome. We are left random YouTubers, people with a Substack or podcast, etc. No fact-checking standards / departments. Will Propublica and PBS Newshour/Frontline be around in 10 years. Federal funding cuts already killed Weekend Newshour.

[dylan604]

If you can change the narrative the whatever percentage of CNN's prime time viewers are getting, then that's even fewer receiving opposing programming. That's 100% of the goal whatever number of viewer percentages are affected. Or is it 1200% fewer opposition viewers??? ::face-palm::

[nuker]

> They hit < 1mil at prime time.

But they do call the election results, in live broadcast. Authoritative election result. This is the target of this acquisition. CBS is done already.