The mainstream media's dominance in narrative- and reality-shaping in presidential elections shattered in 2024.
- The future of news and information is upon us. Welcome to the shards of glass election — and news era.
Both campaigns have targeted small, often little-appreciated shards to reach hyper-specific pockets of potential voters. The campaigns are doing this with unorthodox, sometimes lengthy media appearances and precision ad targeting.
- Former President Trump reached way more potential male voters with his three-hour Rogan conversation (33 million views over the weekend) than he could have with a dozen or more appearances on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC combined. All three cable news networks skew very old in viewership, with median ages ranging from 67 to 70.
- Vice President Kamala Harris reached more young women on Alex Cooper's "Call Her Daddy" podcast, a show about sex and relationships, than she could on CBS' "60 Minutes" and ABC's "The View" combined. Both shows skew very old, too.
- Memes, prediction markets and long-form podcast interviews shape the conversation as surely as any front page.
- It's how reality will be shaped and "truths" hardened.
- It's where partisans will sharpen and spread their ideas — or lies.
- It's where trends and misinformation will be born and trafficked.
- It's where products and brands will be judged and sold.
- It's where a new generation of information stars are spawned.
The big picture: When we speak around the country, we often tell audiences that when you're sitting at a table of people of different ages and politics, several of them probably get their information on platforms you've never visited ... from popular influencers you've never heard of ... on topics that might seem exotic or totally new.
- Big, traditional media still has its moments — presidential debates, town halls and sit-down interviews. But even then, most of the narrative-shaping is done in quick-twitch video bites or reinterpretation on podcasts, social platforms or YouTube.
- Ben LaBolt, White House communications director and senior adviser, told us: "Whether you're president or CEO, when you reach the [network] evening news, you're only hitting [a total of] 20 million Americans — and we've increasingly found that Americans 35 and under aren't consuming news from traditional outlets at all."
- "Video platforms, influencer engagements and streaming of all forms — especially podcasts — must be part of your media mix to reach a younger, diverse, persuadable demographic," LaBolt added.
- When she sat down with "60 Minutes," her comments about owning a Glock (quickly clipped and posted by her campaign) soon had 1 million views on TikTok.
- This shift — partly a reaction to plummeting trust in traditional media, partly the reality of younger people gobbling up news/info on new platforms — has reordered the information ecosystem at an epic scale.
- Harris targeted undecided Latinos on Nueva Network with Stephanie "Chiquibaby" Himonidis for a radio interview last month. Nueva is the largest independently owned Spanish-language audio network in the U.S.
- Harris reached young Black men on the NBA-focused "All the Smoke" podcast, hosted by Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson.
- She aimed for young Black women on "The Shade Room," an online culture brand that reaches primarily young Black people.
- Harris taped an interview last Thursday in Georgia with former NFL player Shannon Sharpe for his podcast "Club Shay Shay."
- He appeared on a livestream with controversial streamer Adin Ross — hosted on the niche live streaming video platform Kick, which is known for looser moderation than a rival like Twitch. At its peak, it had over 580,000 viewers.
- Trump sat for podcasts with comedian and actor Theo Von, comedian Andrew Schulz's "Flagrant" and Barstool Sports' "Bussin' with the Boys," hosted by former NFL football players Will Compton and Taylor Lewan. The Theo Von conversation racked up 14 million views on YouTube, the nation's most powerful video platform.
- Trump also went on Logan Paul's "Impaulsive" podcast — reportedly a recommendation from Trump's 18-year-old son, Barron.
- "Political ads used to be all local broadcast essentially. Now it's CTV [connected TV] and streaming and digital," Fischer says.
- It also makes it harder to operate a divided and diffuse population on shared facts or truths.
- America's new challenge: Can a land of 50 different states thrive with 50 different info-ecosystems — and realities?
- But Katzenberg said legacy news organizations still set major national narratives — that then filter out to the masses through fractured information bubbles. He said old-school outlets are still "the top of the waterfall, but no longer have the ability to reach the customer, the consumer, the people. They give context and relevance and focus and priority — then the tidal wave happens."
- Just imagine, if Trump wins, the power of Elon Musk after he bought Twitter, and turned it into X — and then went all-in to elect Trump. The X-Rogan-right-wing podcaster network would form a new mass media industrial complex.