dagblog - Comments for "Fox News staffers thought Newsmax was a joke. But they're not laughing anymore"

This just in: For the first

artappraiser — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 02:26:11 +0000

In reply to Fox News staffers thought Newsmax was a joke. But they're not laughing anymore

This just in: For the first time ever, Newsmax has scored a ratings win against Fox News. Monday at 7pm, in the 25-54 demo, @GregKellyUSA out-rated @MarthaMacCallum. It's just one hour of one day, but still a milestone for Newsmaxhttps://t.co/8FGEJr8h4v
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 8, 2020

retweeted by Josh Marshall, who added this thought a little later

This is the essence of it. A migration to a new safe space where Republicans don’t get their feelings hurt. https://t.co/p4dUSnmRlF. pic.twitter.com/kPupeYzcV4
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 9, 2020

It’s interesting how open

artappraiser — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 01:17:18 +0000

In reply to Fox News staffers thought Newsmax was a joke. But they're not laughing anymore

It’s interesting how open Ruddy is about the fact that he’s running a scam on his audience (“in his mind...”) pic.twitter.com/2tPJVbvBpb
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 5, 2020

The incorrigible @MattNegrin

artappraiser — Thu, 03 Dec 2020 22:40:48 +0000

In reply to Fox News staffers thought Newsmax was a joke. But they're not laughing anymore

The incorrigible @MattNegrin has proposed a simple test...

When cable shows have a guest on the first thing they should ask is this:

“Do you acknowledge that Biden won the election and that he is president-elect?”

If they say "no," kick the guest offhttps://t.co/KVWqQgT4dG
— Yashar Ali (@yashar) December 3, 2020

It's very real: Newsmax has

artappraiser — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 04:41:00 +0000

In reply to Fox News staffers thought Newsmax was a joke. But they're not laughing anymore

It's very real: Newsmax has found a business opportunity in feeding Trump supporters the baseless theory that the president could still win the election, Ben Smith writes.

Continue reading the main story by Ben Smith @ nytimes.com, Nov. 29

THE MEDIA EQUATION

The King of Trump TV Thinks You’re Dumb Enough to Buy It

Chris Ruddy, the C.E.O. of Newsmax, has found a business opportunity in feeding Trump supporters the fantasy that the president could still win the election.

[...] The chief executive of Newsmax and part of President Trump’s South Florida social circle, Mr. Ruddy has capitalized on the anger of Mr. Trump’s supporters at Fox News for delivering the unwelcome news, first in Arizona and then nationally, that Mr. Trump had lost his re-election campaign. On Newsmax, however, the fight is still on, the imaginary election-altering Kraken is yet to be released, Mr. Trump is striving valiantly for four more years and the ratings are incredible.

Newsmax’s prime-time ratings, which averaged 58,000 before Election Day, soared to 1.1 million afterward for its top shows, with one host, Greg Kelly, cheerleading on Twitter and on the air for “the QUEST TO COUNT all the LEGAL VOTES.” The ratings even drew a congratulatory call from Mr. Trump himself, my colleagues Michael Grynbaum and John Koblin reported last week.

But Mr. Ruddy, as those Clinton messages show, is not the sort of true-believing ideologue his viewers may imagine in the foxhole alongside them. He is, rather, perhaps the purest embodiment of another classic television type, the revenue-minded cynic for whom the substance of programming is just a path to money and power.

All successful TV programmers have some mercenary in them, of course, but even by those standards, Mr. Ruddy is extreme. He has turned Newsmax into a pure vehicle for Trumpism, attacking Fox News from the right for including occasional dissenting voices. And when Trumpism turned this month from an electoral strategy into a hallucinatory attempt to overturn the election, Mr. Ruddy saw opportunity: Newsmax, available on cable in most American households and streaming online, became the home of alternate reality.

“In this day and age, people want something that tends to affirm their views and opinions,” Mr. Ruddy told me in an interview.

He wasn’t hard to reach. Like many people who get generally, even inexplicably, friendly media coverage, the genial Mr. Ruddy is always willing to talk to the press. He is, in fact, a rare and valuable commodity: someone with real access to Mr. Trump who will tell the truth on the record. His insights — 62 quotes in The New York Times in the last four years, 61 in The Washington Post and 51 appearances on CNN — deliver what journalists crave: up-close insights about the president. He has even invited reporters to tag along to Mar-a-Lago as his guest at the president’s private club, which has been a minor irritant for President Trump’s staff, two former Trump aides told me. Not that he’s made any secret of his strategy. The fake crisis of the U.S. electoral system is “great for news,” he told The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner last week.

Mr. Ruddy is hardly alone in the sudden scramble to convert Mr. Trump’s political profile into cash.

“There are a lot of well-capitalized people circling,” said Michael Clemente, a former executive at ABC News and Fox News and former chief executive of Newsmax, who has been part of conversations as a potential leader of a new venture. He describes the proposition as a question of math, and the dominance of liberal-leaning cable channels: “Fifty percent of the country has 90 percent of the news media speaking to them.”

The noisiest effort is led by Hicks Equity Partners, the family business of a Republican National Committee co-chairman and friend of Donald Trump Jr., Thomas Hicks Jr. The Hicks group has sought to lead buyouts of both Newsmax and its smaller and stranger rival, the One America News Network. The group is also pursuing a third strategy, according to a confidential investment proposal I obtained, which would focus on culture rather than news: building “a family-friendly programming destination of broad appeal based on traditional values” by buying and merging a small “equestrian sports and lifestyle” channel and a larger one, which a person briefed on the talks identified as the small, independent Ride-TV and Great American Country, which is owned by the cable behemoth Discovery. (A spokesman for Hicks Equity Partners didn’t respond to an inquiry about a potential deal.)

Other possibilities for the president to cash in on his stature include creating a new Trump TV network from scratch [....]

well, the Murdoch's put the

artappraiser — Sat, 28 Nov 2020 09:27:25 +0000

In reply to NewsMax has been around since

well, the Murdoch's put the kabosh on feeding Trump election conspiracies on all their news media--apparently they don't want the masses riled to the state of not trusting democracy--so the most fervent crazy Trumpkins have seriously revolted, and the older ones that don't do Parler have to have a place to go. Newsmax happy to fill the gap feeding Trump fans, is what Stelter is pointing out, among other things. And Trump has started to tweet them I noticed.

I even read an article that Murdoch was thinking of paying Trump off to go away--like $100M--some gossipy place like Vanity Fair, he's such a problem.

I figure that the Fox TV news demographic was getting so old anyways that they were starting to have to do something to get a different audience to sell to advertisers and this is just pushing them.

His Sky News is doing better without celeb talking head pundits and more "just news" with a conservative slant. a Gen X relative that is center right that doesn't like Trump but is pro some Trump policies like protectionism and cutting immigration told me the other ay he watches Australian Sky News cause he can't abide any of the American choices.

NewsMax has been around since

Orion — Sat, 28 Nov 2020 07:04:42 +0000

In reply to Fox News staffers thought Newsmax was a joke. But they're not laughing anymore

NewsMax has been around since at least the mid 2000s, so I'm not sure about this.

Aside from that, Trumpers probably think Tucker Carlson, along with a lot of Fox News, are Joe Scarboroughs or Shepherd Smiths in the making (a Joe Biden presidency is uniquely poised to attract reasonable people with a conservative disposition) and they need a new media outlet full of mean looking white people and a name that sounds like a nutritional supplement.