Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has reportedly contacted a top dealmaker in the media industry within the past couple of months about creating a Trump television network, the Financial Times reported.I guess I'm supposed to be amused by this. Raw Story's response is a piece titled "How Excruciatingly Bad Will Trump TV Be? Here’s the Deplorable Cable News Channel’s Likely Lineup." (Sample: "Rudy Awakening: Disgraced former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani darkens up your morning by screaming into a camera for a straight hour about the Muslims who are about to slaughter you and take your children as sex slaves at any minute.")
Kushner and Aryeh Bourkoff, the founder and chief executive of LionTree, a boutique investment ban[k], reportedly had a short conversation regarding the possibility of setting up a Trump television network following the presidential election.
Meanwhile, a gray eminence of journalism tweets this:
If it happens, few Democrats will mourn: an institutional force pushing @realDonaldTrump agenda inside GOP post '16. https://t.co/Ru7anl3mCw
— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) October 17, 2016
Yeah, maybe Democrats will win a few more elections if Trump TV is keeping Republican voters crazy. And maybe the programming will seem ridiculous to any rational viewer (though it's a lot easier to laugh at that imagined Giuliani program if you're not Muslim).
I'm dreading Trump TV because I see what the hate speech and conspiracy-mongering of the Trump campaign are doing to America. We've been thinking that perhaps fewer Hispanic kids will be mocked with chants of "Build that wall!" after November 8. We've been hoping that Election Day is the last time we hear the chant "Lock her up!" We see polls telling us that 41% of Americans think the election could be "stolen" from Trump.
And we'd prefer being bombarded with the Trump campaign's message indefinitely?
It's bad enough that Fox News and talk radio have for years provided heartland whites with a 24/7 self-pity party, as they rail about how evil cultural elitists are spitting on them at every opportunity (while mostly ignoring the economic elitists, some of them born-again Christian Texans in string ties, whose lobbying and business practices are really what's screwing them). It's bad enough that Alex Jones makes his audience insane and stupid day and night.
We need more of that? We need Fox on steroids, on cable TV day and night? With an extra helping of alt-right racism, Trumpian sexual brutality, and Jonesian conspiracy-slinging, all of it looking legit because it's on slick, high-production-value TV?
We need well-funded encouragement for this sort of thinking after November 8?
Trump supporter at rally says "Hillary needs to be taken out" Watch: https://t.co/vwicB9i7vo
— Jason Morrell (@CNNJason) October 17, 2016
No, thanks. I don't care if Trump TV loses the next presidential election for the GOP. It would be extremely bad for America -- the Trump campaign in your face, forever. I want it never to get off the ground, and if it does launch, I want it to fail spectacularly -- and quickly.
TRUMP TV?
ReplyDeleteOh, no ! ! !
After the success he made of Trump vodka, Trump steaks, the Trump Shuttle, the Plaza, Trump Taj Mahal (how dumb do you have to be to lose money in the casino business?) and all the rest of it capped off with the Titanic of political campaigns?
If Trump TV becomes a reality, which I doubt, I mean who would trust him to pay his monthly "cable carriage costs", it will be like most Trump ventures a FAILURE. He had nothing to do with the Apprentice start up. We know that was the highly successful Mark Burnett/Roma Downey brainchild. What has Trump ever done besides license out his name that was successful? Hotels? BS. His name is on them. And most of those are $$ losers. No Trump TV will never happen because his name is now LOSER.
ReplyDeleteI don't see how our views on whether and how much this would be 'bad for America' amount to a rat's skinny behind. If there's any sort of sustainable audience for Trumpbart News and advertisers see commercial value there, then there are certainly folks and investor groups with the billions necessary to make it happen.
ReplyDeleteI do question whether it's viable. American big money media is conservative in the small c sense and Trump has an established track record as a businessman that doesn't encourage the idea that he's a reliable business partner. Plus he's 70 and borderline morbidly obese. Meanwhile if Bannon's such a freaking genius, how come this break-off (from Fox News) audience isn't already being exploited by the vehicle Bannon already controls?
IMO this scenario isn't readily comparable to Murdoch hooking up with Ailes. Both those two old disreputable a-holes were oriented first to the bottom line, and both came into their venture with multiple decades in actual msm, including the world of American Mad Men and the English tabloid wars. Trump came up with one carney concept that converted into a show and Bannon's been running a weaponized Drudge website. The two sets of experiences are not at all comparable. To me they look no more promising than hooking up Duck Dynasty with Infowars, something that's already happened & has shown all the blazing success of Pajamas Media.
And what will they advertise? Look at Breitbart and Infowars: gold, guns & Apocalypse survival crap. Those markets aren't already being served?
IAE that's my extremely limited outsider 2 cents worth.
Like a lot of conservative/rightwing media, it'd have to be subsidized by someone with deep pockets, which Trump apparently doesn't have. And considering no one is willing to donate to his campaign, I don't see how he could get the cash required to start a media empire that's anything more than podcasts, a few Web shows, and crappy Breitbart-esque articles. Not to mention he's so stupid with how he spends his money that even if he did get the dough he'd probably squander it in the paranoid way Glenn Beck has with the Blaze.
ReplyDeleteIf Trump and the Breitbartians really try this, Murdoch will squash them like a bug.
ReplyDeleteThis is somewhat tangential to the topic of this thread, but I'm just feeling the muse on Debbie Reynolds' Told You So dance:
ReplyDeletehttp://fivethirtyeight.com/features/men-are-treating-2016-as-a-normal-election-women-arent/
Now onto the self-indulgence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt6Tsc98EK8
Right, that guy is a patriot.
ReplyDeleteAnd if Hillary gets to the White House the voters who put here there are all traitors.
No mention of Sarah Palin's tv stint? What was it? Hour long once a week or something and it was pay per view?
ReplyDeleteSo glad she's finally off the radar.
Also really worried about Trump releasing his horde. I could just see him screaming at his defeat speech, "burn it down!" and them all thinking that the blm movement gets to have riots, so do the Trumpettes. brrr...so scary.
If Trump TV succeeds, the good news is, it'll split the Fox audience in half, to be followed by the Fox ad revenues.
ReplyDeleteThe Trump vs. Fox network war will treat us to watching them strangling each other while simultaneously jumping off a bridge. What a show! Bring more popcorn!
Your crankily,
The New York Crank
There is no chance Trump will ever be able to raise the money needed for this venture. Al-Jazeera has Gulf State oil wealth behind it and it failed fast in this country. Trump's brand is right about where there's is now, and if/when he loses, he'll be toxic to those adoring crowds, because he will have failed them.
ReplyDeleteI agree with most of what's been written here: Trump is a media amateur and a loser at most everything. Also, he would be toxic to investors if he were trying to set up a network. What i could see him doing is running a series of monologue "TV Specials" on YouTube where he'd still have access to a lot of eyeballs but at minimal cost to him and his producers. Other than that, not gonna happen.
ReplyDeleteI think you may get your wish on that. For some reason nobody ever seems to question the theory that Jared Kushner is a competent businessman but something tells me that he is a complete dilettante--like Trump in a way, with a huge amount of daddy income to throw around but no successful projects other than in buying and selling buildings, which doesn't take any skill or cleverness at all.
ReplyDeleteI spent a while trying to find out if the Observer had ever been profitable since Kushner bought it in 2006 (it never did before, either, but it never pretended to be a business before) and I'm pretty sure not (a brief flurry of stories suggesting it might have turned a profit in 2011 ended up pretty clear that it hadn't--a Trumpian overconfidence). He is always coming up with plans to do it more bigly but they don't seem to go anywhere.
His incompetence can also be seen in the unbelievably amateurish campaign management, and I don't think Trump TV will end up being any more serious.
If t-RUMP lets the other human octopus Ailes, and that uber-Fscist, Herr Bannon, run it, it might succeed.
ReplyDeleteIf he decides to be more hands-on himself, then he'll fuck it up, like he has countless other ventures.
I'm not convinced it has to succeed to do a lot of damage while it's on the air.
ReplyDeleteI doubt that Trump TV will ever actually air. Where would the financing come from? As we can see from the campaign, Trump is never willing to spend his own money. Mounting a major media operation is a very expensive business, and what bank or intelligent investor would ever be willing to back Donald Trump in anything. The big banks wouldn't touch him before he made his name toxic.
ReplyDeleteGlenn Beck's media operation is going belly up, and Beck seems to be a hell of a lot more intelligent and media savvy than Donald Trump
I agree, it doesn't have to succeed to do more harm than has already been done. And if Beck is to be the measure recall that it has taken five years.
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