Belt-tightening has hit another big money driver from network TV: the morning show. In early January, Hoda Kotb left the Today show after 17 years. The broadcast reporter reportedly makes more than $20 million a year as a host, and NBC just doesn’t want to keep paying them. That’s how the network cut the band from Late Night with Seth Meyers and reduced the number of weekly episodes of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon from five to four. All of these are signs of something called “TV’s new austerity drive.”[W]I have audiences going to different places to watch their shows,” one agent told Variety. “Some of these entities are experiencing a drop in profits. This is just a fact of life. “[T]it’s a political cudgel used against national news networks,” said David Greene, Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Greene noted that Trump’s anger is focused more on national news outlets than local stations that actually have broadcast licenses. Few networks have local stations. . Paramount, which also produces CBS’s 60 Minutes , had even explored selling 12 in August. But when I asked Oberman about the threat, he said he hadn’t “really heard that.” become problem” for the industry. Perry Sook, CEO of Nexstar, the largest owner of television stations in the US, hopes that the new administration will eliminate rules that limit the number of local stations a company can have. In a November 2024 earnings call, Sook clearly state what kind of journalism they want to see on the station.”[I]It seems that there may be a better and gentler consensus, that reality-based journalism will become fashionable again, as well as eliminate the level of activist journalism outside, “said on the phone. Sinclair, the second largest. owner of TV stations in the US, also wants to strongly for consolidation, and has gained a reputation for directing local stations to cover news with a POV more in line with Sinclair’s own conservative politics repeat conservative general points. But the Trump administration and large broadcast licensees are not only friendly. According to Orman, local stations also tend to have better reach when it comes to political advertising.”[D]igital doesn’t seem to be giving political advertisers the returns they want, and TV is still like that,” Orman told Ad Exchanger late last year. Broadcast TV actually sees ad revenue rise 9 percent in 2024, an uptick due all to increased spending on political advertising during primary election cycle. And with audiences disappearing and streaming beyond the networks, one of the world’s oldest media institutions has retreated. Even if the incoming administration fails to deliver on its promise to punish media outlets it deems offensive, broadcast TV will enter the era which is not always existential. against it seems dangerous.”
