Brian Stelter here. President Trump is telling the press to "report the news," the press IS reporting the news, and President-elect Joe Biden is staying above the fray entirely. Here's the latest...
Fox's new challenger
President Trump's fans who don't think Fox News is right-wing enough have another option on cable and satellite: Newsmax TV.
And something dramatic has happened in the past week: A big audience has sought out Newsmax TV for the first time.
Those two facts are connected. Some Trump loyalists are raging against Fox and changing the channel to Newsmax instead. While Newsmax is still much smaller than Fox, this is the most robust right-wing TV challenge to Fox that I have ever seen.
Over the summer, when I started to keep an eye on Newsmax's Nielsen ratings, the channel was averaging about 25,000 viewers at any given time -- a tiny number by any TV news standard. As the election was approaching, the audience ticked up, but it was still just a fly on the Fox elephant's back. In the final week of October, Newsmax was averaging just 65,000 viewers at any given time.
Then came the election. Newsmax averaged 182,000 viewers during the election week that ended on Sunday. And it is growing even more this week. On Monday the channel averaged 347,000 viewers. On Tuesday, 437,000 viewers. Evening shows like "Spicer & Co" and "Greg Kelly Reports" are reaching 700,000 and 800,000 viewers. These shows struggled to hit 100,000 before the election! Something has changed.
I'm hearing two theories: First, that Fox's early projection about Biden winning Arizona enraged Trump loyalists, causing some to flip over to Newsmax, at least temporarily. Second, that Fox's portrayal of Biden as president-elect is causing even more angst, and sending even more viewers in Newsmax's direction.
>> Also of note: Trump is sharing videos from Newsmax's coverage, and the Trump campaign is providing guests to the channel...
Newsmax's PR campaign
Over the weekend Newsmax pointedly said it had not called the race -- which was a meaningless claim since the channel doesn't have a decision desk. But the channel's hosts keep repeating this claim anyway. The startup channel is tapping into a real vein of rage on the right. If Fox is merely dabbling in election denialism, Newsmax is doubling down on it. Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller was explicit on Kelly's show Wednesday night: "We gotta stop Joe Biden from becoming the next president."
When I interviewed Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy on CNN last Sunday, I called out his channel's indulgence of voter fraud nonsense. I also asked if his business strategy is to tack further to the right than Fox. That's certainly what it looks like. Newsmax has been publishing stories about its ratings gains and saying that "Fox News viewers appear to be deserting the network in droves."
My two cents: Fox News still has a near-monopoly position. Its ratings are not noticeably suffering as a result of Newsmax's ratings spike. While Newsmax averaged 437,000 viewers on Tuesday, Fox averaged 1.86 million. But there has clearly been a disruption in the pro-Trump TV universe. Newsmax has capitalized. Will the ratings bump last?
Supply and demand
Taking a big picture view, Newsmax's sudden gains are about demand meeting supply. There is a demand for content that swears Biden is not president-elect; that Trump is not a loser; that Trump might even win a second term. Al Schmidt, the Republican city commissioner of Philadelphia, touched on the demand side when he told CNN's John Berman: "One thing I can't comprehend is how hungry people are to consume lies and to consume information that is not true."
Think of Newsmax as the supply side. Kelly told his viewers that Trump's America has an "uphill fight on our hands" but he projected optimism as he touted the president and bashed the media. Jay Rosen tweeted on Wednesday: "What we talk about when we talk about disinformation is normally the supply, and how to limit it. Not the demand, and what to make of it."
This is a demand issue right now. In the same way that some Trump loyalists are discovering Newsmax, some are also downloading Parler, the "Twitter-like app that describes itself as the world's 'premier free speech social network,'" the NYT's Mike Isaac and Kellen Browning wrote Wednesday. We are witnessing a further "fracturing of the information ecosystem," caused by conservatives who can't or don't believe that more Americans voted for Biden than Trump...
Sinister right-wing storylines
To understand the demand side, and the desire for resentment-news, I listened to all three hours of "The Rush Limbaugh Show" on Wednesday, even though guest host Todd Herman was in for Limbaugh, who is receiving cancer treatments. I wanted to hear what listeners of the country's most popular conservative radio show were hearing. My primary takeaway: There is no backing away from this voter fraud cliff. Some of the pro-Trump media's most trusted commentators have already jumped and others are right on the edge.
Herman, a morning host in Seattle, knew to compliment his listeners just like Limbaugh does. "You're an expert at pattern recognition," he said repeatedly, urging them to "look at the patterns." His overarching message was that the anecdotes and insinuations swirling throughout right-wing social media are a pattern: "There was fraud." Listeners called in with concerns and conspiracy theories. Every segment reinforced their fears. One minute Herman said dead people were allowed to vote; the next minute he said media outlets (including CNN) were "colluding" with Biden; the next minute he said GOP leaders weren't fighting back hard enough. And he said he fears unrest or worse: "If this doesn't go through the full legal process, I'm afraid this country will come apart." If you're only watching mainstream news, you're missing these sinister right-wing storylines...
The first few stages of grief
As I told Don Lemon on CNN, the five stages of grief are on full display in the pro-Trump universe. The first two stages, denial and anger, are the most perceptible. There are some signs of bargaining and depression too. So far, there aren't many signs of the final stage, acceptance...
Trump still has some ratings power
Here is a new sign that he still has sway among his Fox base. Lately Tucker Carlson at 8pm has been beating Sean Hannity at 9pm, but on Tuesday Trump tweeted that "ballot Corruption will be exposed tonight at 9:00pmE on @SeanHannity." Look at the resulting ratings spike: Carlson had 903,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo, Hannity jumped up to 1.35 million, and Laura Ingraham had 904,000. Trump's tweet seemed to make a big difference...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- What about One America News? Well, the channel's president Charles Herring claims that OAN is "breaking all-time viewership records," but the channel is not rated by Nielsen, so I have no way to verify that... (Twitter)
-- For a great rejoinder to all the fraud-argument-by-anecdote, read this Twitter thread by Megan McArdle... (Twitter)
-- Regarding all the embarrassing setbacks that Trump lawyers are suffering in court, Philip Bump writes, "making random claims on Hannity is easier than proving a case to a judge..." (WaPo)
-- Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum both noted a misstep by Fox's decision desk on Wednesday night. Baier: Democrats have officially retained control of the House, as the desk accurately projected, but "they also estimated Democrats would add about five seats to their majority. That did not occur. Republicans have gained six seats, with multiple races yet to be decided..." (Fox)
-- Eye on the popular vote total: Biden's lead over Trump now exceeds 5 million votes nationwide...
-- CNN was the most-watched channel on cable TV last week, surpassing Fox News, which "had been the most-watched cable network 40 of the previous 41 weeks..." (LAT)
-- Overall, "CNN had its most-watched week in the history of the network (40 years) during Election Week 2020," per a network spokeswoman...
-- "Always an obsessive cable news viewer, the president has been watching even more TV than usual this week, often from his private dining room just off the Oval Office..." (AP)
-- Stephen Battaglio makes some important points here: "Why the president likely won’t create 'Trump TV' after the White House..." (LAT)
THURSDAY PLANNER
Biden and Trump have no public events scheduled...
Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy will hold their weekly pressers...
The Masters tee off in Augusta...
Obama's book tour is about to begin
Barack Obama taped the first two sit-downs for his book tour on Wednesday: An interview with Gayle King for "CBS Sunday Morning" and another with Scott Pelley for "60 Minutes." The CBS interviews will air on Sunday, formally starting the rollout of "A Promised Land," which comes out next Tuesday. The book is already No. 1 on Amazon's best sellers list.
>> Also on Wednesday, Oprah Winfrey announced that she has interviewed Obama for "The Oprah Conversation on" Apple TV+. That episode will come out on Tuesday...
>> When will copies of the book leak and when will excerpts start to come out? My guess is sooner rather than later...
Biden is naming his chief of staff
Reporters were chasing this story all day Wednesday... A chief of staff announcement seemed imminent... And at 7:29pm, the NYT reported that Biden would name Ron Klain to the post "as early as Thursday morning." Three minutes later, Michael Scherer of WaPo reported that Klain had the job, and quoted a statement from Biden. Within a few minutes, every other major outlet matched the news. Read CNN's full story here...
Trump is stalling
While the world moves on, Trump continues to insist that he won the election and continues to share content that repeats the lie. So what's he thinking? What is his motivation? Is it purely about his narcissism? He hasn't answered any questions from any members of the media -- even his Fox friends -- since last week. He hasn't appeared in public at all except for Wednesday morning's Veterans Day ceremony. So we're left to read the tea leaves...
>> He claimed in a Wednesday night tweet that he "easily" won Pennsylvania and Michigan, adding, "Report the News!"
>> CNN's Gloria Borger quoted a source who knows the President well: "He's not worried about the Republican Party. He's worried about how he can commercialize and monetize all of this..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- WaPo's big headline in Thursday's edition: "Efforts to thwart Biden's victory start taking shape." Subheadline: "Trump talks of another run in 2024, allies say..."
-- Karl Rove tried to speak truth to his party with this WSJ op-ed Wednesday night: "The president’s efforts are unlikely to move a single state from Mr. Biden’s column, and certainly they’re not enough to change the final outcome..." (WSJ)
-- But: "Karl Rove was just on Hannity a couple minutes ago and, oddly enough, this didn't come up," Rosie Gray noted. Instead, the segment was all about Democrats... (Twitter)
-- Masha Gessen argues that America needs a proper reckoning with the abuses of the Trump era: "This process can't succeed as long as nearly equal numbers of Americans live in two non-intersecting realities. But such a process is also our best hope for reclaiming a shared reality..." (TNY)
-- Emily Bell tweets: "A couple of years ago I was talking to the news editor of a Ukrainian news provider. She described an exhausting and grim cycle of her reporters spending most of their time just reporting on disinformation campaigns. And here we are..." (Twitter)
-- Brian Fung's latest: "Trump blew up Tiktok and now nobody knows what's going on..." (CNN)
Ivanka's hypocrisy
Oliver Darcy writes: "For the last several days, Trump supporters have emphatically argued that news orgs cannot call election races. So it was quite a sight to see Ivanka Trump on Wednesday celebrate the AP's projection of the state of Alaska for her father. So much for needing to wait for a state to certify election results before celebrating victory! As Benjy Sarlin tweeted, 'It's almost as if 'the media can't call elections' is a new standard invented in bad faith to prolong an election dispute by a few more days.'"
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
By Oliver Darcy:
-- Brandy Zadrozny's latest is about all the claims of a rigged election circulating online. She calls it "misinformation by a thousand cuts..." (NBC)
-- John King chatted with Poynter's Amaris Castillo about covering Election Week: "It is America's greatest gift and signature event, and it is truly an honor for me to be trusted to take the role I have…" (Poynter)
-- When Steve Kornacki got home on Saturday, "I slept for 15 and a half hours..." (People)
-- Since the election, Matt Drudge "has seemed even more eager to distance himself and his site from the man in the White House," Tiffany Hsu notes... (NYT)
Another day, another awful record
Shortly before 8pm ET, the US hit another new record high number of daily Covid-19 cases, with at least 140,543 new cases reported. And the number was expected to keep rising later in the evening. "This is the highest single day reporting since the pandemic began," CNN reported. "This also marks the ninth consecutive day of more than 100,000 cases of Covid-19 in the US..."
Leaderless
Multiple news outlets pointed out on Wednesday that the pandemic is worsening while the president is missing in action. CNN referenced his lack of public events and little evident interest in his work. The NYT noted a "federal leadership vacuum" and said the White House coronavirus task force "has been all but publicly silent." Why aren't we seeing daily press conferences by the task force? Why aren't we hearing from Trump every day at this dire moment?
CNN crew leaves rally over safety concerns
Oliver Darcy writes: "CNN correspondent Kyung Lah and her crew left a Georgia rally featuring Marco Rubio and Kelly Loeffler on Wednesday over safety concerns. Lah said on Twitter that about one-third to one-half of the crowd was massless at the indoor event as cases surge in Georgia. After choosing to exit, Lah tweeted, 'It's not safe given the #Covid19 numbers in Georgia...'"
BREAKING
Toobin fired by The New Yorker
Oliver Darcy writes: "Jeffrey Toobin was fired from The New Yorker on Wednesday after he accidentally exposed himself to colleagues with The New Yorker and WNYC during a Zoom call last month. 'I am writing to share with you that our investigation regarding Jeffrey Toobin is complete, and as a result, he is no longer affiliated with our company,' Condé Nast chief people officer Stan Duncan wrote in an email to employees. Toobin tweeted, 'I will always love the magazine, will miss my colleagues, and will look forward to reading their work.' He declined further comment..."
>> Darcy adds: "After the incident last month, Toobin asked for time off from CNN, where he is the network's chief legal analyst. A CNN rep did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday on Toobin's status..."
Philly's new editor
"Gabriel Escobar, a longtime journalist who has helped manage a rapid and sometimes tumultuous transformation at The Philadelphia Inquirer, has been named its top editor," Inquirer reporters Anna Orso and Jesenia De Moya Correa wrote Wednesday.
Escobar has been editor and VP, "second in command of the newsroom," since 2017. With this promotion, he will be "one of the highest-ranking Latinos at a U.S. news organization..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- More McClatchy cuts: "The Kansas City Star is shedding its downtown Kansas City printing plant and office, which will eliminate 124 jobs..." (KCBJ)
-- "Kelly Dyer Fry will retire as editor and publisher of The Oklahoman at the end of the year..." (Oklahoman)
-- Debi Chirichella is no longer "acting president," she is now president of Hearst Magazines, replacing Troy Young... (NYPost)
YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST...
Finalists for the duPont-Columbia Awards
Oliver Darcy writes: "The Columbia Journalism School is — for the first time — announcing the finalists for the 2021 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards. The finalists list will be released Thursday at 8am ET and the winners will be announced at a virtual ceremony in February hosted by Anderson Cooper and Michele Norris. PBS leads with five finalists, followed by Netflix and NYT with two each. Other finalists include NPR and Optimist, NBC News Digital and Upper East Films, WaPo, Vice, and AJE Witness. CNN and HBO are also finalists for 'After Truth,' this year's doc about disinformation, directed by Andrew Rossi and exec-produced by Brian Stelter..."
Twitter ratio of the day
Brian Lowry writes: "I'm really not here to dunk on Fox's Howard Kurtz, but this tweet equating the Trump administration's actions with comedian Whoopi Goldberg's opinions deserved to be ratio'ed as badly as it was. And for the 'read the column' types, since Kurtz said he wished people had read his full argument, the both-sides-ism there wasn't much better. Multiple websites wrote about the brutal mockery of his comments...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
By Kerry Flynn:
-- BuzzFeed is selling its own branded vibrator as it invests more in sex content and products, with a Sex and Love vertical set to launch early next year, Kayleigh Barber reports... (Digiday)
-- Kristen Hare writes about Military Veterans in Journalism, a group supporting veterans with six-month fellowships and other resources... (Poynter)
-- ICYMI: "Robin Kemp lost her news job in Clayton County, Ga. — but she kept reporting the news. It paid off on election week." (WaPo)
ESPN shuts down esports vertical
Kerry Flynn writes: "As part of its hundreds of layoffs, ESPN is shuttering its esports vertical. Cost-cutting is unfortunately common these days, but this move surprised me. In September, I wrote about publishers investing more in gaming and esports coverage as the industries are booming, which CNN's Shannon Liao has covered extensively. WaPo editor Mike Hume told me at the time he looked to ESPN's esports coverage as inspiration for WaPo launching a gaming vertical..."
>> ESPN PR told THR that esports will still be covered, but it has chosen to "cease operations for our dedicated daily esports editorial and content..."
TWO new Quibi post-mortems
Kerry Flynn writes: "Just when I thought the post-mortems were over, Wednesday gifted me -- and the world -- with two more deep dives into what went wrong with Quibi. For Bloomberg Businessweek, JP Mangalindan wrote a fascinating piece, drawing on interviews with 24 former and current employees. It's full of interesting new details and biting quotes like this one: 'When your CEO puts their L.A. home up for sale less than two years after buying it, that's when you know the writing is on the wall.' And for The Verge, Julia Alexander and Zoe Schiffer also shared more insight from former employees. One described Quibi's death as inevitable: 'I want to be a team player, but honestly we were reverse-engineering a more high-end YouTube, but one you had to pay for and couldn’t comment on...'"
Big YouTube outage
I was first alerted to this news by my three year old daughter Sunny, who was about to have a little bit of YouTube time before bed. "YouTube users in multiple regions around the world encountered issues in playing videos on the site Wednesday for more than an hour," Variety's Todd Spangler wrote. He noted that "such extended technical problems are rare for the service..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART SIX
-- Andy Cohen and our own Chloe Melas will be receiving the Hope Award for Advocacy from RESOLVE, The National Infertility Association, on Thursday night! (RESOLVE)
-- Streaming stock drama: "Shares in FuboTV, which recently went public, gained more than 2% to end Wednesday at a record closing price of $16.03 after the company reported better-than-expected subscriber numbers. The stock jumped more than 20% in early trading Wednesday and at one point surpassed $20 a share before losing steam in the last half of the day..." (Deadline)
-- "Nat Geo is going back to 'The Hot Zone.' The cable network ordered a season of the now-anthology series that will center on the anthrax attacks in 2001..." (TheWrap)
Country Music Association Awards
For a full recap of Wednesday night's awards telecast, check CNN Entertainment...
>> BTW: The Associated Press "pulled out of its planned coverage" of the awards show "due to restrictions that have been placed on still photographers and screen captures of the broadcast..."
Two new reviews
Brian Lowry writes: "Two more new offerings from Netflix land today. 'Trial 4,' which looks at the multiple trials of Sean Ellis, a Black man wrongly convicted of murder in Boston, is a timely story that looks at systemic injustice, but which falls victim to the increasingly common docuseries excess of running a few episodes too long. Elsewhere, 'The Liberator' is an interesting hybrid of live-action/animation – using a next-gen version of what's known as rotoscoping – marred not by the look, but its flat, lifeless storytelling..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART SEVEN
-- Lisa Respers France writes: "According to Jason Momoa he was 'completely in debt' and 'starving' immediately following his role on the hit series 'Game of Thrones...'"
-- One more from Lisa: "Rupert Grint joined Instagram to introduce his new baby..."
-- Chloe Melas writes: "Kevin Costner and Diane Lane spoke with me about their new movie 'Let Him Go,' and Costner told me why he's drawn to the western genre..."
LAST BUT NOT LEAST...
Pet worker of the day
Rick writes: "Gracie can finally get back to work."
Thank you for joining us...
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