The rise of digital voices, and Comcast splitting in two, brings doomsday predictions for traditional media

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Comcast’s cable networks, which include MSNBC and CNBC, make a heckuva lot of money.

It doesn’t matter.

As the Wall Street Journal first reported, the communications giant confirmed yesterday it’s spinning off almost all its cable properties, including USA, E!, Oxygen, Syfy and Golf Channel, which generated $7 billion in revenue in the latest 12-month period. 

Staying with the mother ship are the NBC television network, the Peacock streaming service and Bravo, plus sports, movies and theme parks.

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Prognosticators have warned for years that cable news is plagued by aging audiences. (iStock)

Beyond the financial questions – whether the smaller cable units have to seek a larger partner – is an unmistakable implication: that all-news channels have a questionable future.

With CNN having done a round of layoffs last year and expected to impose deeper cuts under its new boss, cable staffers, including top anchors, are nervous about their hazy future.

Prognosticators have warned for years that cable news is plagued by aging audiences – although Fox’s ratings have never been higher – and, along with newspapers, are being eclipsed by newfangled digital media.

The shift was on display during the presidential campaign, when Donald Trump and Kamala Harris made plenty of news on podcasts and by courting social media influencers. No question such disruptors shook up the campaign, helping to break the monopoly of the corporate media and giving a platform to new, more freewheeling voices.

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In the Free Press, author and former CIA analyst Martin Gurri argues: 

"The campaign saw the news media, as an institution, take a giant leap toward irrelevance — and ultimate extinction. From the New York Times to CBS News, the grand old brands of the industry gambled what shreds of trust remained in them — 31% by one measure — to exert influence on behalf of Democratic candidates and progressive positions. They lost the public’s trust, yet failed to move the needle."

Citing a new term, Gurri says that "coverage of the election felt like postjournalism on acid. Joe Biden received extravagant praise as a wise, experienced leader until he became a political liability. Then, overnight, the media pack tore him apart for being too old and infirm, memory-holing the fact that they had spent the past three years assailing anyone who questioned the lie that he was ‘sharp as a tack.’

A side-by-side of Kamala Harris and President-elect Donald Trump. (Getty Images)

"Attacks on Trump were so bizarrely strident, and at the same time so ritualized, that they attained the aspect of parody if not wit. My favorite election story was The Atlantic’s ‘Trump Is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini.’ Not long after its publication, the three-headed super-totalitarian could be found cooking French fries at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania."

He also points to Washington Post conservative columnist-turned-Trump-hater Jennifer Rubin, who tweeted: "It is 1933. Hitler is in power."

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All this "went beyond the old joke about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic: It was fighting noisily over the best seats in the house, while an entire industry burned to the ground.

I have to blow the whistle on the overheated rhetoric. While it’s fashionable to dismiss the "legacy media," they aren’t headed for extinction or burning to the ground.

In this photo illustration, a girl looks at the CNN website on her laptop as she awaits the 2024 US election vote count between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. (Faisal Bashir/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

For all their flaws and bias, they do this thing called reporting. Most of the disclosures about the most controversial Trump nominees have come from big news organizations. And the most important moments of the campaign, the two debates and key interviews, have played out on television.

Still, the times they are a’changing.

The rise of Substack has provided journalists and others with an independent platform, and it has doubled down on politics while outlets like Meta’s Facebook and Instagram are minimizing such content.

"There’s a desperate need for a quality platform with trusted voices, where honest-to-God political discussion, debate, disagreement can happen without it either disappearing into the ether or taking place on a platform where there’s constant knife fights and flame wars," co-founder Hamish McKenzie told the New York Times.

The biggest stars have earned millions of dollars in subscription revenue. The Times says these include data guru Nate Silver and the Bulwark, the conservative, anti-Trump site. The Bulwark says it raked in about $6 million in annual revenue from Substack. Silver says he’s making more money than at ABC.

But Substack, which Elon Musk once tried to buy, is not profitable, since the company only takes a 10% cut of earnings. Musk temporarily refused to allow Substack links on X.

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However this all shakes out, it’s a strong platform for disaffected or laid-off journalists, as well as unknowns who build a following with their specialties.

The Comcast move telegraphs how much the media landscape has changed. But those who predict doom for the traditional media are missing the mark; all of America isn’t constantly online.