Anyone who has followed my diaries this year will be no stranger to the fact that I am a huge critic of mainstream media, now being relabeled “legacy media.” For years, I have grown disgusted watching them normalize Donald Trump and treat him as a normal everyday politician. The corporatist greed stinks on nearly all of them as they breathlessly cover every little dramatic thing that happens, hoping to scare or enrage as many people as possible without actually addressing the problems of politics — all for the sake of making cash.
Since the election, however, legacy media has hit a speedbump in their gambit to capitalize as much as possible on political drama:
No one is watching them.
I wrote on this topic back in July (www.dailykos.com/...), and holy shit I had no idea how much I was on the damned money.
I theorized, back then, that no one is really watching corporate media anymore — everyone has moved on to independent forms of media. The legacy media ratings confirm my theory emphatically.
www.yahoo.com/…
The numbers presented here are a little confusing to decipher for the sake of the bigger picture (thanks for nothing Yahoo, you piece of geriatric crap) — I will clarify.
Yahoo makes it look like FOX news grew after the election, which they have, but Yahoo failed to note that FOX (like all the other channels) has had a net loss of viewership. They’ve risen 41% to roughly 2 million viewers daily after the election, but have dropped overall from their primetime viewership of roughly 3.2 million viewers.
Meanwhile, for other networks, like CNN and MSNBC, the drop has been more “final” and precipitous with viewership dropping from the high 100s of thousands to mid and lower 100s of thousands of viewers per day.
In a nation of 330 million, you cannot look at me with a straight face and tell me that those viewership numbers are not laughable. No damn person is watching what these groups have to share (save for the small numbers of fanatics on both sides of the aisle).
Bear those numbers in mind — 2 million viewers, a few hundred thousands viewers, and so on.
Allow me to show you the numbers of viewers from the independent media source I first found this story from:
Yup. David Pakman. A name I am sure many here are already familiar with. In this video, Pakman explains how during his peak this year his channel was hitting in the neighborhood of 3 million views per day. Pakman also noted how his channel also saw a dip in viewership immediately after the election where he was getting roughly 1 million views per day.
Now?
Pakman explains that he has consistently been getting 2 million views per day post-election. Pakman’s viewership, numbers to numbers, is on par with FOX News’ viewership. Mind you, Pakman is only one of the many independent media sources out there in the Leftist sphere. There’s: Brian Tyler Cohen (www.youtube.com/...), Luke Beasley (www.youtube.com/...), Beau of the 5th Column (www.youtube.com/...), and even PoliticsGirl (www.youtube.com/...) just to name a few YouTube Channels — and there are several more out there with followings in the millions.
I, for one, welcome this revelation that the legacy media is slowly dying. Their ignorance and stagnation in the face of democracy’s attempted murder is inexcusable.
In Pakman’s video, however, he draws attention to a snag. Commentators on the Far-Right overwhelming control the independent media space with their podcasts (Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson) and radio shows (www.dailykos.com/...). We all laughed at Ted Cruz for “wasting” all of his time doing nothing but podcasts all day long. Looks like Cruz got the last laugh with his “pro-gamer move.”
This is why Trump has won and MAGAism refuses to die out — people are existing in a fascist sound bubble within independent media.
This is something that must be overcome if Democrats ever wish to have a prayer at getting their messaging through and winning back the working class voters. Independent Leftist Media creators, like Brian Tyler Cohen, had complained how DNC politicians had refused to appear anywhere except places like CNN and MSNBC even though it was clear that legacy media was failing to get messaging across.
Brian Tyler Cohen:
“[This is] something that I’ve been beating the drum about for years now, the Right has a propaganda machine at its disposal that hums on for 24 hours a day on TV, radio, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, and Discord servers everywhere that pump out right-wing propaganda on an endless loop. The top 20 podcasts in America include: Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Theo Von, Dan Bongino, Candace Owens, Megan Kelly, and Ben Shapiro. Know who we have on the Left? The Daily and PodSaveAmerica, and all the while, Democrats continue to for some f*cking reason unbeknownst to me to pretend that mainstream media is some partner in democracy — that they’re on our team.
I don’t know how much clearer I can say this, they are not on our team. Corporate media exists to serve its shareholders. It is a business before anything else, certainly before it’s some protector of democracy. And yet still, our side has decided that when there is some big interview? Go to mainstream media. When there’s news? Give it to mainstream media.
Let’s keep validating the same outlets that continuously undermine us at every single turn. Sometimes I have to beg politicians for interviews for my channel, for months and months, and still don’t even hear back, and yet they’ll fall over themselves to go talk to the New York Times — the same outlet that ran what? 60 cover stories about Hillary’s emails???
That’s who they need to confer more validation onto?
That’s who they reward with their time?
We desperately need a Left-Wing media ecosystem that rivals what they have on the Right, and we desperately need our politicians and our thought leaders to embrace that idea.”
Not to worry, though — Brian Tyler Cohen and other Leftist Independent media creators are already working on a plan to do just this.
www.youtube.com/…
www.wearechorus.com
“CHORUS is a collective of impactful voices coming together to end the far-right’s domination of online conversation. CHORUS is a 501(c)(4) that will organize, support, and grow strong online media by building the infrastructure necessary to retake power for everyday Americans and marginalized communities. With expanded reach and new programming, CHORUS is scaling to meet people where they are and to normalize progressive values and ideas in the mainstream.”
Some DNC politicians, like Senator Amy Klobuchar, are already taking the leap and finally doing interviews on independent news sources, like Brian Tyler Cohen’s show.
This is how we obliterate this generation of Fascism in America. If legacy media and politicians (of both sides) are stuck in billionaire pockets, then we the people need to fix the problem ourselves.
