Belt-tightening has already hit another money-making driver of network television: the morning show. At the beginning of December, Hoda left Qutb today After 17 years on the show, reports say the journalist was making more than $20 million a year as host, and NBC didn’t want to keep paying him. It’s also why the network axed Bond Late Night with Seth Meyers and reduced the number of weekly episodes The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon From Five to Four They are all signs of what Variety called “TV’s new austerity push.”
“We have an audience that goes to different places to watch their shows,” an agent told Variety. “A number of these institutions see a decrease in their income. It’s just a fact of life.”
But given that television audiences are currently divided between streaming, cable and social media, why would Donald Trump threaten its existence? “This is a political cudgel used against national news networks,” said David Green, director of civil liberties at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Greene noted that Trump’s ire was focused more on the national news media than on the local stations that are actually licensed to broadcast.
Some networks have local stations. Paramount, which also produces CBS 60 minuteshas a handful and was even considering selling 12 of them in August, before Trump issued his latest threats against the network. But when I asked Oberman about those threats, he said he “hadn’t really heard that it was an area of concern for the industry.” “In any case, the future government is more in favor of radio and television.”
Perry Suk, CEO of Nexstar, the largest TV station owner in the United States, hopes the new administration will remove rules limiting the number of local stations a company can own. In a call obtained in November 2024, Sock made it clear what kind of journalism he would like to see on those stations. “[I]”It looks like a kinder, gentler consensus may be emerging, that maybe fact-based journalism will come back into vogue, and that it will also eliminate the level of activist journalism out there.”
Sinclair, the second-largest owner of television stations in the United States, is also eager to consolidate and has gained a reputation for directing its local stations to cover news with a POV more in line with Sinclair’s conservative political leanings. Sinclair was the subject of a viral video in 2018 that showed dozens of news anchors from across the United States reading the exact same text, criticizing the media for repeating conservative platitudes.
But the Trump administration and the big licensees aren’t friendly just because of their shared political leanings. Local stations also have a better reach when it comes to political advertising, Orman said. “Digital doesn’t seem to be giving political advertisers the returns they expect, and TV still seems to be delivering that,” Orman told Ad Exchanger late last year. Broadcast television actually saw a 9 percent increase in its ad revenue in 2024, an increase entirely due to increased spending on political ads during the primary election cycle.
With the election behind us, that advertising money is drying up. And as viewership fades and networks become over-streamed, one of the world’s oldest media institutions has its back against the wall. Even if the incoming government does not follow through on its promise to punish media outlets that find stories offensive, broadcast television is entering a period of existential uncertainty.
“Broadcasting is so vulnerable right now, any threat to it seems like a risk,” says EFF’s Green.
