Nolte: Signs of the Collapse of Corporate Media Influence Are Everywhere

Within hours of the 2024 election being called for Donald Trump, I published this piece declaring the end of the era of corporate media dominance.

“The Road to the White House no longer goes through 60 Minutes, CNN, Fox News, Meet the Press, the New York Times editorial board, or the cover of Time Magazine,” I wrote. “That road now runs through the Joe Rogan Experience, Breitbart News, New Media, podcasts, talk radio, and social media.”

However, I also wrote that we will never be rid of the corporate media. The propaganda value is worth too much for the massive multinational corporations and billionaires who own these outlets to ever give them up.

Nevertheless, once the affirmative action of carriage fees through pay TV comes to an end (where you are forced to subscribe to a cable/satellite package that includes channels you never watch and those channels still receive an unearned piece of your monthly payment) CNN and MSNBC will no longer be profitable. They cannot survive on merit (advertising fees based on viewers), but they will always be around because soulless liars like Joy Reid, Jake Tapper, Brian Stelter, Nicole Wallace, Rachel Maddow, and Dana Bash do and say what their corporate and Deep State masters tell them to do and say.

Well, so what? Let them talk to each other in their velvet-lined echo chamber of serial hoaxes and intolerance. In the only arena that matters to the corporate media, the arena of influencing, shaping, and manipulating public opinion, they have already lost.

Don’t misunderstand. Far-left outlets like CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the New York Times, etc., will always control the thinking of thin-skinned leftists intolerant of outside ideas who seek only comfort and affirmation. But us Normal People? No, no more, and the closing days of the 2024 presidential election proved that.

The corporate media sprung four October Surprises on the public to win a close race for Kamala Harris, and none of them worked…

• Trump’s Madison Square Garden Nazi Rally
• The Puerto Rico Joke
• Trump Called for Liz Cheney’s Execution Hoax
• Iowa Poll Hoax

A decade ago, that would’ve likely done it. This year, no one was listening. The rigged CNN panels where the Republican is outnumbered 5-to-1. The even worse MSNBC panel with zero Republicans. The emotional blackmail. The word policing. The shaming, the scolding, the lying, the “joy,” the “vibes,” the “brat”… No one was listening. Instead, they were listening to Donald Trump in long-form interviews with podcasters. They were scrolling social media for facts and then making up their own minds.

And now the signs are everywhere that the corporate media have turned the corner into irrelevance…

The far-left Los Angeles Times just fired its editorial board. This failing newspaper is already losing a shitload of money every month, and now the owner is looking to attract Republicans with a “fair and balanced” reboot:

The disgraced Chris Wallace exits CNN. That loser was making seven figures. With the affirmative action of pay TV carriage fees coming to an end, CNNLOL can no longer afford the yearly lease for Wallace’s soul. Wallace sounds like he will now try being a podcaster. He will fail because he sucks, but that tells you where the action is.

CNNLOL is facing massive post-election layoffs:

With the election in the rearview, C.E.O. Mark Thompson will finally implement his true transformation plan at the network—including the culling of hundreds of jobs. Many of CNN’s own journalists, plenty of whom were blinded by Trump’s significant victory, have evinced similar naiveté about their own fates.

…

In the next few months, I’m told, CNN will implement another round of layoffs that will impact hundreds of employees across the organization, including those whose TV production talents won’t necessarily be needed in the new digital-first landscape.

Comcast is looking to sell off MSNBC so it doesn’t drag down the stock price and the Comcast brand.

The far-left Washington Post is imploding due to two things: 1) Alienating everyone to the right of Fidel Castro, which gave 2) its residual far-left subscribers the power to finish the paper off for any real or perceived ideological sin, which is what’s happening.

MSNBC and CNN have suffered a crippling post-election ratings drop, probably due to viewers who have been assured for ten years the walls were closing in on Trump, only to see him and the MAGA movement triumph on Tuesday night.

The left-wing fascists at the Bulwark have been reduced to demanding Joe Biden go full-fascist to stop Donald Trump.

Then there were those who evaporated. Politico was a non-player. Time and Newsweek never hit anyone’s radar. The Atlantic disgraced itself with a hoax that only resulted in pointing and laughing. ABC and CBS News shamelessly rigged their respective presidential and vice presidential debates to no effect.

The best news is that the corporate media will never reform, never change, and fade even more into the echo chamber of irrelevance at the hands of a few million hard-left subscribers who keep them alive, but only if they remain irrelevant by comforting and affirming those subscribers.

John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.