New Media Is Leaving the Old Guard Behind

Podcasts are exploding, TikTok is a news source, and traditional media is shrinking in reach and influence.

Please consider the Wall Street Journal report Trump's Win Cemented It: New Media Is Leaving the Old Guard Behind

Two weeks ago, Donald Trump sat down with the podcaster Joe Rogan for three hours, an episode that drew more than 45 million views on YouTube and over 25 million listens across Spotify and other platforms. On election night, Rogan was among several podcast hosts who got shout-outs in Trump's victory celebration.

It underscored what the 2024 presidential race made clear: A new media landscape has emerged. The traditional gatekeepers of political discourse—TV networks and newspapers—are shrinking in influence as Americans turn to many more outlets for information.

The percentage of people listening to podcasts in a given month has more than tripled in a decade. In the social-media realm, more than half of TikTok's users say they regularly get news on the platform, according to the Pew Research Center. Elon Musk's takeover of X has had a major impact, with political content, especially right-leaning posts, blanketing new users' feeds.

The main three cable channels were down 32% in viewership collectively compared with 2020, to around 21 million, with CNN losing almost half its audience.

Some 47% of people in the U.S. have listened to a podcast in the past month, including nearly 60% of people who are under 35, according to Edison Research. And 54% of podcast listeners say getting news or political analysis is an important benefit of the medium, according to the industry advisory and data tracker Sounds Profitable. [Mish Note: This is the key age group, not 30 and under. I explain why below].

Cable news viewership overall is down from its recent peaks during Covid. Fox News is the leader, averaging 2.7 million prime-time viewers in October; MSNBC is second, with 1.3 million; and CNN, which has had the steepest drop-off in recent years, is averaging 792,000.