Austerity measures have already hit another big revenue driver for network television: the morning show. At the beginning of January, Hoda Kotb left Today show after 17 years. The broadcast journalist was reportedly making more than $20 million a year as an anchor, and NBC simply didn’t want to keep paying it. That’s also the reason why the station canceled the band Late Night with Seth Meyers and reduced the number of weekly episodes of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon from five to four. They are all signs of what Variety called “television’s new austerity.”
“We have an audience that goes to different places to watch their shows.” an agent told Variety. “Some of these companies are seeing a decline in sales. It’s just a fact of life.”
But with broadcast television’s audience now spread across streaming, cable and social media, it begs the question of why that is Donald Trump threaten its existence? “This is a political cudgel used against national news networks,” said David Greene, civil rights director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Greene noted that Trump’s anger was focused more on national news outlets than on the local stations that actually hold the broadcast licenses.
Some networks own local stations. Paramount, which also produces CBS 60 minutesowns a handful and has even been on a journey of discovery selling 12 of them already in August before Trump made his recent threats towards the network. But when I asked Oberman about these threats, she said she hadn’t “really heard that it was a problem area” for the industry. “If anything, the new government is more pro-friendly towards broadcasters.”
Perry Sook, CEO of Nexstar, the largest television station owner in the U.S., hopes the new administration will repeal rules that limit the number of local stations a company can own. To an earnings conference call in November 2024Sook has been clear about what kind of journalism he wants to see on these channels. “It doesn’t look like there’s a kinder, gentler consensus emerging that fact-based journalism might come back into fashion and eliminate the level of activist journalism out there,” he said on the call.
Sinclair, the second-largest owner of television stations in the U.S., is also seeking greater consolidation and has gained a reputation for directing its local stations to carry the news with a more befitting POV Sinclair’s own conservative political leanings. Sinclair was the subject of one Viral video 2018 It showed dozens of news anchors from across the US reading the exact same script, criticizing the media for repeating common conservative talking points.
But the Trump administration and major broadcast license owners are friends for more than just their shared political leanings. Orman said local stations also tend to have a greater reach when it comes to political advertising. “Digital advertising doesn’t seem to be giving political advertisers the returns they expect, and television still seems to be giving them,” Orman says said Ad Exchanger late last year. In broadcast television, advertising revenue actually increased 9 percent in 2024, an increase attributed entirely to increased spending on political advertising during the major election cycle.
With the election approaching, advertising money is running out. And as viewership dwindles and streaming spending far outstrips broadcasters, one of the world’s oldest media institutions finds its back against the wall. Even if the new government fails to deliver on its promise to punish media outlets that spread stories it finds offensive, broadcast television faces a period of existential uncertainty.
“Broadcasting is so vulnerable right now,” says the EFF’s Greene, “any threat to it seems like a danger.”
