I have written often recently about the final death knell of the old media. Call them what you want. Mainstream media, Legacy media. Corporate media. It doesn't matter. They are now the dead media.
In a recent VIP article, I even noted the official time of death. It was 1:17 AM on Wednesday, November 6. Declared by none other than Doctor Elon Musk himself.
Of course, many of us have thought the media dead long before that, but regardless of the final pronunciation, what we could all agree on is that they were indeed dying. What made Election Night 2024 such a profound moment in their demise was that it was not just Kamala Harris who American voters rejected, it was the media themselves.
They have been corrupt for years, we all know that, but the past few months of this election took things to a whole new level. They tried telling us that Joe Biden was 'sharp as a tack.' They told us Harris was 'brat' and perfectly qualified to be President. They tried to memory-hole not one but TWO assassination attempts on Donald Trump. They embraced calling half of America racists, sexists, Nazis, and fascists. They told us that Trump would be the 'end of democracy.'
I could go on and on.
And on Election Night, America told them to stuff it. We don't BELIEVE them anymore. Not even the tiniest little bit. In fact, whatever they tell us, usually our first instinct is to believe the exact opposite.
With all of that said, it was extremely gratifying today to see just how dead the legacy media is. Check out these numbers since election night:
MSNBC ratings collapse:
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) November 12, 2024
Joy Reid - down 54.6%
Ari Melber - down 49.6%
Chris Hayes - down 47.2%
Alex Wagner - down 53.6%
Morning Joe - down 39.6%
Stephanie Ruhle - down 67%
Andrea Mitchell - down 39.7%
https://t.co/MwnpkM791w
Holy cow. That's just beautiful. The Shellraiser roller coaster in New Jersey doesn't have a drop-off that steep.
And it's even worse than just those numbers, according to Outkick:
Viewership for MSNBC and CNN has tanked since Donald Trump steamrolled Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, an election result the two networks ensured viewers would result in the end of democracy.
Mediaite obtained viewership data from Thursday to highlight the concerns both channels face. For the day, MSNBC averaged 596,000 viewers while CNN recorded just 419,000.
That's a decline of 23% for MSNBC and 40% for CNN year over year. But the primetime numbers are even more concerning. While CNN saw a 30% decline, MSNBC declined an unprecedented 54%.
Naturally, the repercussions from these cratering ratings are coming in swiftly. According to The Daily Mail, CNN is close to a new round of layoffs, firing hundreds including many top 'stars.'
I hope they can learn to code.
Over at MSNBC, the long-circulated rumor that Comcast is set to sell off the cancerous 'news' division is starting to become a lot more than rumors.
Comcast is putting MSNBC up for sale.
— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) November 12, 2024
CNN just announced massive layoffs coming.
Maybe the new owners will figure out that lying non-stop to your audience is a lousy business model. pic.twitter.com/XRSE15aGWQ
Of course, this news prompted a few hilarious 'offers'.
Maybe Elon Musk can buy it. 😏 https://t.co/l9tQ3PSmYT
— Schadenfreudelish (@aggierican) November 12, 2024
HAHAHA. That would be the icing on the schadenfreude cake.
I bid tree fiddy. https://t.co/Idk8rn2Uzc pic.twitter.com/gpw7fC1L7r
— Blue State Snooze (@BlueSnoozeBlue) November 12, 2024
You would be overpaying. But sure, go ahead with that offer. Musk overpaid for Twitter, after all.
What may be the most hilarious part about all of this is that even those horrible viewership numbers are probably a little too high. We have seen countless conservatives -- who already know the media is dead -- tuning into those stations in the aftermath of the election just to enjoy the misery.
Call it rubbernecking, like when you can't resist looking over at the 10-car pileup on the interstate. You know it might be horrific, but you simply can't resist.
When you take that into account, the number of people tuning into CNN or MSNBC who actually believe they are getting news from them could probably be slashed in half from the reported viewers.
There are cat videos on Twitter that regularly get more viewers than that.
https://t.co/0OkvpdNyZ4 pic.twitter.com/mH5nNHONOy
— GayLatina4Trump (@GayLatina4Trump) November 12, 2024
Yes, do NOT feel bad about laughing. We deserve to laugh it up at the dead media's expense. If there is anything they have truly earned, it is our collective derision.
I could go into all of the reasons, but you know them already. They think they can still control the narrative when they can't. They lie to viewers and readers and when they get caught lying, they don't issue corrections, they double down. They think they are better than us. They failed to account for the fact that new media (for lack of a better term) in the form of Twitter, Substack, The Free Press, Spotify, Rumble, and so many others not only offer people better information, but they do it in real-time and they call out the lies in real-time as well.
The dead media tries to call all of that 'misinformation.'
As Morpheus told Neo in The Matrix, 'Fate, it would seem, is not without a sense of irony.'
The corporate media died because they are the misinformation (and far too often, deliberate disinformation).
Recently, a friend of mine on Twitter offered up a great new hashtag for whenever anyone from CNN, MSNBC, the networks, or the legacy newspapers tries to tell us what we are supposed to believe: #DeadMediaTalking. Another offered up a similar tag, #TheTalkingDead.
Those tags should be attached to every tweet they send out, every clip from one of their shows, every excerpt from one of their articles (which outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times hilariously still believe people will pay to read).
Who knows, maybe someone like Jeff Bezos can someday restore some level of credibility to a place like The Washington Post. He has shown some indications of wanting to do so. His newsroom and the paper's few remaining subscribers revolted on him for that though, so we're not holding our breath.
But even if he is successful in changing direction, it is not an overnight fix. Legacy media has been destroying itself for decades. It will take generations, if ever, to regain any level of trust or credibility. Meanwhile, they will continue to be drowned out by the ever-growing, infinitely more credible new media.
Time will tell if the dead media is at all interested in learning lessons or altering course. But regardless of what they do, ultimately, I imagine that the world will decide that it is better just to let the dead remain dead.
