The instant Trump was cut off of Twitter a national sigh of relief became almost palpable. No more hysterical ranting, gaslighting and spouting hate, lies and gibberish (Covefe) every waking minute of every day. Then the day of Joe Biden's inauguration the new mental ease was finally validated. We'd have no more use of the presidential bully pulpit to spout hate and crap. Plus no more endless drama and psychotic episodes eliciting mockery and incredulity in the rest of the world.
We, the People, were finally free of the loathsome, loudmouth orange pestilence president- catapulted into power by the Russkies. The problem was that for the corporate media it was a mixed bag. Yes, their "fake news" tormentor was finally neutralized, but how would they sustain attention and command eyeballs with him gone?
The sixty- four dollar question on every media nabob's mind suddenly became: How to fill the void Trump left? Perhaps with more (and better, i.e. not single-focus) journalism? Well, that ought to be a no brainer. Howard Polskin, who tracks conservative and right-wing news sites through his website, TheRighting. said he would be shocked if news consumption didn’t decline accordingly. No Trump, no exciting news, no controversy. No readers, or at least as many as before. As Polskin put it:
“The level of drama and tension throughout the country has dropped considerably,”
Well, no shit, Sherlock. What do you think happens when a noxious human jackhammer- outside your window every damned day - finally has its plug pulled?
But the sad fact is once Joe Biden entered the White House and Trump essentially disappeared from the news cycle, many of those viewers drifted away. They lost the entertainment dimension of the news to which they had become accustomed, even addicted. What's the point of watching if there was no more Trump to incite commotion? To get one excited if even in unhealthy ways?
The most deeply affected network was CNN. Indeed, after surpassing rivals Fox News and MSNBC in January, the network has lost 45 percent of its prime-time audience in the past five weeks, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Meanwhile, MSNBC’s audience has dropped 26 percent in the same period. Fox News — the most Trump-friendly of the three networks in its prime-time opinion shows — has essentially regained its leading position by standing still; its ratings have fallen just 6 percent since the first weeks of the year. (MSNBC has since gone to the top of the ratings, barely, after many viewers abandoned FOX for the more exciting fake news landscapes of OAN and Newsmax).
But so far the Biden White House had not produced the daily Twitter outrages, hourly scoops and endless controversies that filled up newspaper columns and cable news panels until a few weeks go. The Sixty four dollar question on every media nabob's mind now appears to be: How to fill the void Trump left? Perhaps with more journalism. Actual journalism and not focused almost entirely on a crackpot authoritarian's infernal antics.
It’s unfathomable to me that media executives could not have anticipated that the furious demand for news in 2020 and early 2021 would drop with Trump's departure. That the period featuring a president Trump was essentially an extended "black swan" - at least in media annals. Certainly one of the most momentous in living memory, encompassing the scourge of a pandemic, an incompetent, self-absorbed president, the nearly instantaneous collapse of national and global economies, a wave of racial justice protests, and a U.S. presidential election that culminated in an insurrection and impeachment trial. All of it driving people to their TVs, laptops and phones in a combination of horror and fascination.
There is little doubt that Trump played a central role in the news-media interest, but that doesn't mean it was healthy. In 2014, the year before Trump announced his candidacy, the three leading cable news networks collectively attracted an average of 2.8 million viewers a night during prime-time hours. By 2019, Trump’s third year in office, that number had nearly doubled to 5.3 million each night.
On the national scene, Trump and his idiocy, bombast and dramas proved a bonanza for many media outlets and personalities. Trump’s various scandals and outbursts helped reporters build résumés, sell books (e.g. Bob Woodward's 'FEAR' and "RAGE') , land lucrative commentary gigs and win awards. Journalists won a dozen Pulitzer Prizes for Trump-related stories between 2017 and 2020, including for investigations of Trump’s taxes, his campaign’s ties to Russia, his suspect charities, and his alleged hush-money payments to two women before the 2016 election.
What's not to love? Well, how American journalism descended into a sometime personality cult and navel-gazing enterprise. Broken only when the serious investigations into Trump's lawlessness (including two impeachments) came to the fore.
Americans ought to rejoice at the psychological evacuation of Trump's malignant presence from the national scene. And that includes the media. As numerous sober commentators have observed this is a chance to now return to a semblance of national sanity, minus Trump's Twitter tirades every hour of every day. It is an opportunity to again process normality: a presidency in which the chief exec is not on a grievance bender every day.
Yes, the era of a relative boring presidency has arrived, and we ought to embrace it, relish it. Not spew regrets that we don't have Dotard to "entertain" us with his narcissistic psychosis every day.
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