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The 2024 election was a podcast election and a YouTube election.
There was also something else new at play here: It was an election where several people who used to have high-profile, influential perches at big mainstream media organizations found new, influential perches on the internet, at companies they built and own themselves. People like the former Fox News stars Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, and the former New York Times writer and editor Bari Weiss.
This was an idea we've heard about for a long time, and one we saw put into practice back in 2011 — when Glenn Beck split with Fox News and started TheBlaze, his own subscription streaming service. But until recently, we hadn't seen many people follow in his footsteps. Now it's becoming a well-worn path.
I wanted to understand why this is happening now, and how it's working, so I asked a man who's directly involved: Chris Balfe, the CEO of Red Seat Ventures — a company that has helped Carlson, Kelly, and Weiss set up their podcast and streaming businesses, and sells ads for them. Not coincidentally, Balfe used to work with Beck at TheBlaze (the duo had a messy divorce).
As Balfe explains, the Big Media-to-the-internet route isn't going to work for everyone. I also don't want to overstate the trend. Even though traditional media like cable TV is in decline, it's going to be with us for some time. See: Donald Trump, who wants to stock his administration with people he's watched on Fox — just like he did in his first term.
But talking to Balfe gives you a good sense of what's happening behind the scenes, and the challenges that still remain for stars who want to make the leap. You can listen to our entire conversation on my "Channels" podcast; here's an edited excerpt of our chat.
More than a decade ago, you were working with Glenn Beck, who left Fox News and started TheBlaze. At the time, it seemed like we would see more people doing what he did — leaving mainstream media, going to digital, and building an audience there. But that didn't happen, really, until the last couple years. Why did it take so long, and why is it happening now?
Two things. One is that the technology and tools have caught up in a big way. When we launched TheBlaze, we had to mail people Roku boxes and say, "Hook this up to the back of your TV. You might need something called an HDMI cable. We'll send you one of those if you want one."
You would literally mail your subscribers Roku boxes?
Yeah. And explain to them how they would download an app and watch it. And so clearly, with every TV in the world having connectivity, and every toaster in the world having connectivity, that technical hurdle and user-behavior hurdle is gone.
Sixty million people just watched Mike Tyson and Jake Paul.
Exactly. The second change is the monetization side. Where are the dollars?
When we think about people who are in both a linear-network space and a digital space, it's easier to scale, quicker to scale, and potentially more lucrative in the digital space.
You're saying it's potentially more lucrative than a traditional big-dollar TV contract?
That definitely depends on the talent. We talk to folks who want to leave traditional media, and we hear how much money they're making, and we say, "Wow, that's a great deal for you. And if I model out how long it's going to take you to make that, if we're successful, it might be three years before you can make that kind of money again. And that's if we're successful — we might not be."
So for a lot of people, we suggest hanging on to those big, fat media paychecks as long as you can. If you're trying to replace a $2 million-a-year paycheck, it's going to take time. Unless you're Tucker Carlson.
Is there a certain kind of person that works well in traditional media that can also succeed in digital?
What doesn't work is someone who's there by virtue of the time period that they're on TV. So if you're a nightly news anchor — no offense to the nightly news anchors — you are unlikely to be successful as a podcaster because you're being paid $5, $10, $15 million a year. And if you were out that night and your "B" host goes in, the [ratings] probably are exactly the same.
But shouldn't the exposure you're getting on mainstream media be enough to bring a portion of your audience to digital?
I'd say mostly not. There's really a fandom component to it, and that's the dark-arts part of this — when each person comes to us, and we try to evaluate [the power of their fandom].
People — agents, in particular — always say, "Is it the number of Facebook followers, or followers on X or whatever?" It's not really any of those things. It's watching the show. It's listening and talking to people about how they react to this person. And would you kind of proverbially walk across broken glass [for them]? Because we're switching you from a push medium to a pull medium. And that means people are going to want to have to pull.
When Tucker Carlson was pushed out of Fox, did you have any concern that his work would not translate to digital?
Definitely not. I felt very strongly that Tucker was going to have the No. 1 podcast in the country. Or No. 2, depending on how quickly Joe Rogan grows.
Why him, compared to any other person who's on TV with a big audience?
The answer is his ability to be at the forefront of the creation of media moments rather than covering media moments.
This is one of the things we talk about a lot in news, and especially in right-of-center news: There are a lot of podcasts, YouTube shows, TV shows, and radio shows where news happens, and they react to it. It's interesting because they're interesting people, but that's sort of the end of it. There are a few personalities who have the ability to create news cycles rather than react to news cycles.
Glenn Beck was a big one of those back when he was at Fox News, in particular, but also on TheBlaze. And I would point to Tucker Carlson, absolutely, and say, "This is a person who's a must-watch — not just for the right but for everyone to try to figure out what the heck he's talking about."
He's intriguing, inflammatory. Both. He's visiting Vladimir Putin.
And Megyn is doing that increasingly right now. The coverage that Megyn is getting across the entire internet for every single thing that she says or does right now is really astounding. I haven't seen anything like it since the Glenn Beck Fox News days, where there is a newsworthy piece of content that comes out of every one of her podcasts these days.
I also think that goes toward this shift that we've been talking about, where for a long time, whatever happened on podcasts happened between the ears of the people listening and didn't make it successfully out into the rest of the world.
And now the top podcasts are making news more often — not because the shows have gotten better but because people are paying more attention and realizing great content is happening there.
How is the money working? There used to be a stigma about advertising on right-wing, conservative spaces in general, and podcasts in general, for different reasons. It seems you're still struggling with that — you're not getting blue-chip advertisers on Tucker Carlson's show.
It's correct that it's rare that we see any Fortune 500 company spending a lot of dollars in any controversial space: news, true crime, right-of-center politics, left-of-center politics. "Brand safety" is still something that big brands are concerned about — obsessed with, in certain cases — and therefore they avoid all politics and all news and all true crime and all other things that people like to listen to.
What's most valuable to you right now, a podcast listener or a YouTube viewer?
A podcast listener, if they subscribe to the podcast feed on Spotify or Apple, is the most valuable because they're the stickiest. They spend the most time with a given show. There's automatic downloads, in the case of those two apps. And once they follow or subscribe, they're going to get every episode. They're more likely to stick with us. They have more lifetime value.
They haven't pulled out a credit card, but it's almost as if they have. They've committed to you in some way.
And then they start making a mental appointment in their own brain about, "How often is this show coming out? When am I going to make the time in my daily life to listen to that show?" There's really more of a commitment to podcast listening.
Whereas on YouTube, it's still super valuable to us. But of the people who are coming and watching on YouTube, 70% of those people are not subscribers to our channel. They're being recommended algorithmically.
And the two concerns that I have about that is one — clearly they're not as big a fan. So they may not be as responsive to advertising. Or they may watch one video and not the next. And two — we've all gone through algorithmic hell in the past with Facebook and every other platform.
The algorithm that brought them there is an algorithm that could not bring them there tomorrow.
For sure.
