Fighting disinformation by cutting the cable?
Activists like Sleeping Giants and Nandini Jammi fight online hate—which is often closely tied to misinformation and outright disinformation—by pressuring advertisers. Who wants their lifestyle brand or tech company closely linked with supporting white nationalists and disinformation peddlers.
But I got another idea after reading Dan Kennedy’s blog, Media Nation, post from Feb. 26, “Don’t censor right-wing disinformation. Just stop making us pay for it.”
Let me explain.
Kennedy notes (by way of info from WNYC’s On The Media and media reform advocacy organization Free Press) that even if all of the ad dollars were drained from Fox News they would still have a profit margin of “90%.” So even if confirmed disinformation peddler Tucker Carlson’s show were run ad-free for a year, his program would still make money for the network.
How is this possible?
Despite a drop in viewership post-Trump administration, “The cable division saw a 1 percent gain in revenue, to $1.49 billion, and a 3 percent increase in pretax profit, to $571 million,” according to the New York Times. Just a line later, we see how Fox could survive without ad dollars, “fees paid by cable operators to carry the network […] $928 million.” Fox is one of the most expensive networks for cable providers to, well, provide. They have huge negotiating power thanks to their viewership.
So shaming advertisers for supporting disinformation and hate with their ad dollars won’t be enough to get Fox to change its ways. And remember this is not to say everything Fox News does is disinformation, but that there is no incentive for the network to change. So long as nothing changes the money rolls in.
So perhaps the activists who would shame publishers, broadcasters, and anyone who says they are a news organization to change by hitting not only the ad dollars, but also the cable fees.
Would red state, middle America still get Fox News if they had to sign up for it via an à la carte cable system? About $2 a month goes to Fox from basic cable subscriptions, which doesn’t sound like much, when Comcast and other providers charge $50 or more for basic cable.
So what would the media landscape look like if the average viewer had to choose to pay Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and other cable news outlets rather than simply get lumbered with them in an unchangeable bloc?
I’m not sure, but I’d be willing to find out.
Part of what shook up the newspaper industry and allowed a wide variety of digital-first and digital-only news organizations to flourish is the crash in advertising and classified fees going into the coffers as ad dollars and classifieds moved to Facebook, Google, and Craigslist. Newspapers are still working out how to fund the news.
A shake-up in the cable news industry might just be the tonic to fix some of their ills. Or it might spawn something even worse.
