It was just about a week ago that we have the stunning revelation of Tucker Carlson being canned by Fox News. Since that time, I covered this subject in a few different places, mentioning how things are changing in that world.
In this article, we are going to focus upon the media companies, specificially their new divisions. The reality is these companies are done. By 2027, the entities that own the cable news networks will be a shell of themselves.
Cable news use to be huge business. This was the Boomer epicenter. Demographics plays a huge role in what we do as a society. It is evident in the new world.
In my lifetime, I saw the shift go as follows:
This is something that is driven by demographics. For example, when I go on walks, when I see a newspaper laying at the end of the driveway, I can tell you the age of the household. It is not a young couple with a kid or two. It is people in their 70s (or likely 80s) who still get the paper delivered.
Consider this: when was the last time you bought a newspaper.
Even the Baby Boomers moved on from that.
What they did not do, however, is advance away from cable news. One of the reasons why that industry exploded was due to the fact the largest population in history was enjoying their productive years just as the industry came into being. As cable spread throughout the United States, people kept signing up. A couple wars brought in huge ratings as did 9-11.
This created enormous media personalities. People like Sean Hannity, Chris Matthews, Bill O'Reilly and Anderson Cooper became household names. Their shows drew millions of viewers each night.
There is a problem though.
The nightly news was mainstay for decades. This was a mainstay for the Silent generation, the one preceding the Boomers. Unfortunately, as their viewers died off (literally), so did the impact.
We are seeing the same with cable news. Cord cutting is mostly a demographic topic. This started just before the 2010s and has steadily continued. Who is most likely to cut the cord; a young GenX or a Boomer? The answer is obvious.
Of course, as an aside, many Millennials never even got broadcast television, especially those at the latter half of the generation.
Nevertheless, we see history repeating itself, this time with cable news as the target.
This shows the breakdown of where the Baby Boomers stand in the United States. As we can see, almost 27 million of them are no longer with us.
We have to note this is still a huge amount of people. Even after all those deaths, the Boomers still outnumber the GenXers by about 7 million people. That said, the future of the Boomers in terms of earning potential and power is not great. They are on the slide as compared to the Millennials who are in the process of assuming power in many different areas.
We hear this term thrown around. There is now a growing industry called Independent News. This is everyone from someone on YouTube with a channel giving people new items to some of the aforementioned names now having their own broadcast companies on the Internet.
In other words, the digital world is taking over this industry also.
And why shouldn't it?
The Internet changed how information was received. Ultimately, we are simply referring to another form of information flow.
In other words, people are not tuning into the major media companies properties to get their information. This is especially true of the younger generations who spend their time looking at devices. That means that, in another 5 years, we will be down another 10 million Boomers at the present death rate. How are these entities going to replace those lost viewers?
People are no longer turning to the nightly news for information. The same is starting to happen to the cable news channels. Wherever people are going, it is another source resident on the Internet. Just look at the contract a personality like Joe Rogan got. He has tremendous influence when discussing what is going on, albeit not in the traditional newscast style.
People often wonder why there is a lag between when technology is introduced and the actual disruption takes place. There are often a number of reasons for this. However, one make one is demographics.
We know people tend not to embrace change, especially if they are older. Therefore, the reason for the delay often comes down to the previous generation dying off in large enough numbers that the bottom line is affected. Something like the Iphone can disrupt quickly yet it is taking decades for home phones to completely disappear.
The mainstream media companies are facing a technology apocalypse. Due to the fact that video creation, editing, and distribution is readily available means that the industry's moat is under fire.
This is worth watching.
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