- Cable TV news ratings are back up thanks to the FBI raid on Trump's Florida home, Mar-a-Lago.
- Political advertising will rise to $13 bilion in 2022, $1 billion more than in 2020, GroupM estimates.
- News outlets are grappling with how to cover Trump: potential indicted criminal or potential presidential candidate.
So much for a quiet summer. Cable TV news networks have scrambled to cover some of the biggest moments in history over the past few months, from the Supreme Court's vote to end Roe v. Wade's federal abortion protections to the compelling drama of the January 6 committee hearings investigating the insurrection at the Capitol.
Now August just got a whole lot busier thanks to the FBI's eye-popping seizure of classified materials at Trump's Florida estate Mar-a-Lago.
The FBI and Trump have catapulted cable news back into the ratings big leagues alongside the broadcast networks. Audiences across the political spectrum are tuning in, fascinated and outraged at the latest turn of events.
This high-stakes new narrative centered on Trump has set off a chain reaction: a scramble for legal sources familiar with DOJ and FBI investigations and some contemplation about how, again, to deal with a former president who defies all conventions, according to several TV network sources.
A Trump bump for cable news ratings
The extraordinary FBI search goosed Fox News' average primetime viewing audience, which leapt to 4 million viewers Monday, August 8, in the wake of the raid. By comparison, in July, Fox News averaged 2.47 million viewers.
MSNBC had its best night since February 2021 — it was fortunate for the cable network that the news broke on a Monday, the night that Rachel Maddow reclaims her chair each week as she segues out of her anchor role. (Starting this week, Alex Wagner will fill that 9 p.m. hour Tuesday-Friday.) MSNBC's primetime lineup averaged 2.7 million viewers overall, up from the channel's July average of 1.6 million.
CNN, too, added viewers, with a more modest increase: to 1.18 million up from 806,000, according to Nielsen numbers.
After seeing cable news ratings soar during Trump's presidential runs and following January 2021's violent insurrection, news directors and advertisers alike are evaluating audiences' appetite for Trump the accused criminal, Trump the 2022 midterm kingmaker, and Trump the likely 2024 presidential candidate.
TV's most wanted experts: Trump insiders and legal minds
Ari Melber, who hosts MSNBC's legal show "The Beat With Ari Melber," told Insider the events of the past week are so historic they'll be taught in law schools and history classes for decades to come. Melber has had recent interviews with former Trump advisors Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro.
Melber said ideal sources for this moment are fact witnesses and legal voices. "Everyone wants a current or a former Attorney General. Lester [Holt] had a big achievement gaining Merrick Garland," said Melber. "A fantasy dream guest would be a grand juror," should Trump be indicted, "or the line prosecutor who's dealing with the direct evidence and testimony, and then who sooner or later is gonna say, 'Here's why we fairly should not go further on the former president. Here's the base, what we found,' or 'Here's why we should.' If you could talk to that person in real time, that's great."
Fox News has Lara Trump on board as a contributor, along with a daily host in former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. CBS News has former Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Former Trump communications executive Alyssa Farah Griffin has recently joined ABC's "The View" and has been appearing on CNN as a conservative political commentator.
Meanwhile, CNN parted ways with longtime legal eagle Jeffrey Toobin, who said on Friday he was exiting the network after 20 years. NBC News' top reporter on the Justice Department beat Pete Williams just retired. Ken Dilinian took over as justice and intelligence correspondent last month.
Political ad spending is expected to reach a record high in 2022
Advertisers are pondering whether the possibility of the first US president to be indicted will be a blip or turn into yet another compelling Trump-fueled news cycle that could last all the way to November — potentially overshadowing their fall sports buys.
"Given the more sustained ratings highs we saw from the last few presidential election cycles, if there were a more permanent news event we would certainly evaluate spending increases due to higher ratings capacity," David Campanelli, EVP and chief investment officer at Horizon Media, told Insider.
With further details of the Mar-a-Lago raid and Trump's response unfolding, Fox News ended last week averaging 2.7 million viewers — up from July but well down from the August 8 audience. MSNBC and CNN saw similar results, down from Monday but up over the previous week and compared to the same period last year.
Last week, Fox chief executive Lachlan Murdoch noted robust political ad spending on Fox News and predicted record spending through this fall's election cycle. Agency Group M estimates that political advertising this year will hit $13 billion, up a billion from 2020, although much of that spending heads to local markets rather than national outlets.
'Finally the press is treating Trump like a guy under investigation vs a guy who is a candidate for president'
Since the last election, CNN and MSNBC — as well as CBS News and ABC News — are all under new management. CNN, which was criticized for giving Trump too much airtime under Jeff Zucker, has a new parent, Warner Bros. Discovery, and a new network chief, Chris Licht. Licht has been visiting pols on both sides of the aisle since taking over in May, Axios reported, in hopes of addressing concerns that his network has been too opinion-centered and promoting a more balanced take on the news cycle.
MSNBC meanwhile, has been led since December 2020 by Rashida Jones, who took over from longtime network president Phil Griffin. Under Jones, MSNBC has been picking up new, more left-leaning talent including President Biden's former press secretary, Jen Psaki, and Symone Sanders, a former chief spokeswoman for the Vice President.
One MSNBC insider noticed a change in tone at the network: "It's not a traditional cycle again," this person said, adding that a presidential run by Trump will play differently than in 2016 or 2020. "If you have a debate, he's not going to show up, or if you have a debate he's going to go completely off the rails."
When guests or pundits opine that the FBI investigation might actually help Trump win voters in a presidential bid, the MSNBC insider noted, "that stuff is shut down pretty quickly now" by hosts or other voices. "People on air realize that's not the situation anymore."
"Finally the press is treating him like a guy under investigation versus a guy who is a candidate for president," this person continued. "That's the difference."
Barbara Fought, an associate professor of broadcast and digital journalism at Syracuse University who hosts a political round-table on WCNY, said Trump is no longer the inevitable GOP candidate: "We're at a pivot point to see if his base and moderate Republicans are going to stick with him. There will be interest from Fox viewers in whether people are ready to move on to other candidates."
At least one key Fox News anchor may be ready to move on from Trump. Laura Ingraham said on a Monday podcast that the country was exhausted with political battles and Americans may believe "it's time to turn the page if we can get someone who has all of Trump's policies, who's not Trump."
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7o8HSoqWeq6Oeu7S1w56pZ5ufonykus1mpKymkph6p7vXZqWer6Nir7Otwp5kraqlor1uvM6loK2hk5a5bq3Dr5yrrJmotq%2BzjGpqZpqZobmqu81maWlqYmKF