Welcome to this week’s edition of Confider, the media newsletter that pulls back the curtain to reveal what’s really going on inside the world’s most powerful navel-gazing industry. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.
EXCLUSIVE — FOX NATION FAIL: The future of the Murdoch empire's big bet on streaming is under a cloud, as the conservative cable giant began cutting staff at Fox Nation last month, coinciding with post-Dominion layoffs across Fox News Media, multiple people familiar with the situation told Confider. Fox Nation became especially vulnerable after Fox fired Tucker Carlson just days after reaching a $787.5-million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, costing the OTT streamer its top original content producer and arguably biggest draw for subscribers. Tucker’s importance to Fox Nation cannot be overstated: Besides his thrice-weekly longform interview series, he also produced a number of conspiracy-laden, headlines-grabbing documentaries about Jan. 6 revisionism and testicle tanning. “Fox Nation is basically over without Tucker,” one network insider told us. “They’re not shutting it down, and probably never will, but they're really cutting it back.” (Ironically, before his firing, Carlson blasted Fox Nation as a product behind the scenes.) While Fox News has never shared subscription numbers for the streamer, the pro-Tucker boycott that has tanked on-air viewership for the network has almost certainly impacted Fox Nation’s numbers. And so following the costly defamation settlement, when the Murdochs looked at multiple avenues to cut costs for Fox News, this inevitably included the once-prized Fox Nation, which CEO Lachlan Murdoch only recently touted for its “accelerated subscriber growth.” The cuts appear to have coincided with the broader Fox cuts we reported earlier this month, which included a number of veteran journalists and employees, adding up to less than three percent of the network’s staff. (A Fox News source, meanwhile, previously insisted to Confider that the slashes are unrelated to the settlement.) All hope is not lost for Fox Nation, however, as the streamer intends to announce a new slate of programming in the coming weeks. The streamer has had some success with boomer-centric lifestyle and culture programming starring big names like Kevin Costner and Dan Aykroyd, and it has also begun to expand into anti-”woke” comedy specials from the likes of Roseanne Barr and Rob Schneider. During an investor call in February, Lachlan Murdoch boasted that “Fox Nation accelerated subscriber growth over the last quarter and last year and had the best quarter ever for engagement in terms of hours viewed, no doubt driven by brilliant fresh content like Yellowstone 150.” He also claimed that “higher Fox Nation subscription revenues” had resulted in increased profits for Fox in the final quarter of 2022. Skip ahead to May, however, and Fox Corp. was reporting a quarterly loss due to the Dominion litigation. Of course, Fox Nation is hardly the only victim of the network’s penny-pinching, which also comes at a time when the entire media industry slashes payroll. In recent weeks, Fox News has canceled several hours of original programming across its weekends, mornings, and sister channel Fox Business, resulting in some layoffs. The network eliminated yet another hour on Monday when it officially moved Fox News @ Night up to 11 p.m., leaving the now-vacant midnight hour to air reruns. And with Jesse Watters’ shift into Carlson’s old 8 p.m. time slot, Fox News let go of the remaining employees left over from Tucker Carlson Tonight, informing them that they’d need to stay on until July 14 in order to receive their severance packages. After publication, Fox News sent a statement calling Confider’s reporting “wildly inaccurate” while insisting the streaming service was booming. “There is no scaling back at FOX Nation — we just had our best year ever with more programming, viewers and revenue and one of the highest conversion/lowest churn rates in the industry,” the statement added.
EXCLUSIVE — THE ABCs OF TALENT: ABC News has been without a SVP of talent strategy and development since April, when the network parted ways with Galen Gordon, who became a fall guy for the T.J. Holmes and Amy Robach affair debacle. Now Confider has learned the frontrunner for the plum gig is former NBC News SVP of talent Elena Nachmanoff who left the Peacock network in 2021 after 31 years in the role. Top talent, including hosts of The View and Good Morning America, received an email mid-June asking for them to submit a paragraph introducing themselves to the new talent chief. “He/she will be here soon and it would be nice to have you include a personal message along with everyone else. Feel free to also provide any links to any work you’d like to showcase,” according to the email from Senior Producer of Talent Development Julie Aleman, a copy of which was obtained and reviewed by Confider. The email went on to ask on-air stars to fill out a form for inclusion in the “talent development database.” We hear some of the ladies of The View “lost their shit” about the email. “Does Joy Behar or Michael Strahan really need to explain who they are?” asked one ABC staffer. Meanwhile the delay in announcing who’ll fill the network’s SVP of communications gig has raised eyebrows internally with people familiar with the matter confirming to Confider that Disney’s pick for the job, former CNN flack Lauren Pratapas, was offered the role but pulled out of the running before signing on. A rep for ABC News declined to comment while Pratapas didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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EXCLUSIVE — THE TROLL WHO TRICKED ABBOTT: Meet the man who fooled Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. On Sunday afternoon, the Republican governor went viral after earnestly tweeting and then deleting a clearly fake news article about Garth Brooks being booed off the stage in Texas for allegedly going “woke.” Never mind that the country festival was entirely made-up, that its host town doesn’t exist in Abbott’s own state, or that the article was authored by “Flagg Eagleton”—the news of a “woke” country star paying the price was simply too good for the governor to bother checking. That fake story was the work of Christopher Blair, a self-styled “liberal troll” from Maine who runs a group of satire sites, including the Dunning-Kruger-Times, which fooled Gov. Abbott and is aptly named for the cognitive bias effect where someone’s lack of knowledge causes them to overestimate their own competence. In a phone chat with Confider, Blair claimed most of his traffic comes from “geriatric potatoes” who hang around Facebook and don’t read past the headline to see the many disclaimers that his articles are fake—an audience he purchased via ads targeting 55-and-older individuals who also liked Donald Trump and Sean Hannity’s fan pages. “They love this shit. It’s like flies to honey,” he told Confider. “I’m absolutely making a living off this.” And now that Elon Musk has turned Twitter into a “cesspool” dominated by anonymous users with paid verification badges, Blair said he’s seen his Twitter traffic rapidly expand. “The algorithm suddenly doesn’t hate me anymore.” Blair has a long track record of tricking conservative personalities and their loyal audiences into sharing the goofiest possible satires. Just last month he fooled pseudo-intellectual Jordan Peterson and talk-radio host Larry Elder into believing Bud Light was barred from Germany’s Oktoberfest for being too “woke.” Blair’s bucket-list personality to fool next is Donald Trump Jr., “or anyone with the last name Trump,” he said. Profiting off getting right-leaning internet dwellers to share obviously false stories, some of which get reappropriated by overseas click farms, has drawn Blair plenty of criticism and the ire of fact-checkers like Snopes, but he pays it no attention. “I tried for a long time to pretend it had a noble purpose,” he confessed. “But nowadays, I’m just a guy who considers himself a liberal troll, exploiting Trump’s followers the same way he does… These are not people sitting on the fence waiting for me to push them to the dark side. They’re already gone.” While Gov. Abbott may have figured out the ruse, one of his own colleagues hasn’t quite been so quick to the draw: Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller has yet to delete another one of Blair’s satire articles raging about “woke” Garth Brooks from his Facebook page.
Tips? We’re all ears: confider@thedailybeast.com or call/text us 551 655 2343.
BONGINO BOUNCED: Right-wing meathead Dan Bongino was “forcibly removed” from Cucina Palm Beach late Friday night, Politico’s Daniel Lippman reported in Sunday’s Playbook alongside an image of the famed blowhard amid a scrum of security guards outside the Florida club. No one seems to know what actually happened here. Cucina did not respond to requests for comment and a video from a different angle posted to Twitter doesn’t reveal much at all. Bongino took to his Monday podcast to rail against the media, take personal shots at Lippman and “Bullshitico,” and tell his (very vague) side of the story. According to the ex-Fox News star, security “bear hugged” his wife, Paula Andrea Bongino, because “she was on the wrong line or whatever” for the bathroom and “dragged her out.” If you know anything more about this ordeal, we’d love to hear from you at confider@thedailybeast.com.
IN PLAIN SIGHT: Is Ronan Farrow OK? The star journalist posted a topless selfie to his Instagram—which was widely shared in media circles—holding an Xbox controller with the caption: “What are you doing and is it really more urgent than playing Diablo IV with me?”... Anna Wintour dining at the Condé Nast cafeteria at a table that had been specially set for the Vogue editrix, complete with table cloths and fancy cutlery… Despite early bumps in the road, Jimmy Finkelstein’s new media startup The Messenger continues its hiring spree, this time bringing on Law & Crime managing editor Adam Klasfeld as a senior legal correspondent.
WE HEAR WHISPERS: The owner of The Village Voice, Street Media CEO Brian Calle, has swooped in to buy Paper magazine just months after it laid off its entire staff… Guests at this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, an annual media and marketing wankfest, were questioning its relevance with a number of high-profile execs and journalists skipping altogether.
MORE FROM THE BEAST MEDIA DESK
—Fox News finally unveiled its new post-Tucker primetime lineup changes. The big news is that Jesse Watters will move into Carlson’s highly coveted 8 p.m. slot, with self-declared “king of late-night” Greg Gutfeld moving out of late night and into the 10 p.m. hole. More here.
—Chris Cuomo’s ugly lawsuit against CNN has taken yet another ugly turn as the ex-anchor now accuses the arbitrator in his case of being personally biased against him, asking the court to remove the lawyer before proceeding. Read about that here.
—Geraldo Rivera is done with The Five and may soon also be done with Fox News altogether. The TV vet announced he’s left the 5 p.m. gabfest after many on-air spats, and then days later followed it up with a Twitter post pondering quitting the network, accompanied by the requisite shirtless selfie. Click through to see here if you must.
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—Justice Samuel Alito last week called in a favor from the Wall Street Journal to run a prebuttal of a ProPublica story about his ethically questionable ties to billionaire Paul Singer. ProPublica on Monday published the breathtaking backstory behind this saga and the many ethical violations underpinning it. Read here.
—After months on the media market, The Daily Beast is no longer for sale, IAC boss Barry Diller confirmed to The New York Times on Friday. Read more here about scuttled negotiations included a potential deal with influential Hollywood outlet The Ankler.
—Netflix’s docu-series celebrating the life story of Arnold Schwarzenegger may be a smash hit but The Bulwark isn’t playing along with the lovefest. The center-right outlet painstakingly outlines how the governator pioneered the “catch-and-kill” tabloid strategies that later paved the way for Trump’s ascension to the White House. More here.
***WHAT ARE WE OUTRAGED ABOUT NOW?***
With media coverage dominated over the past week by the Titan sub disaster and the aborted Russian military coup, the right-wing outrage-industrial complex managed to claim both events were actually orchestrated by the White House to push Hunter Biden out of the news cycle. “The Biden administration knew the Titan submarine imploded Sunday. But waited until today to make it public,” Fox News contributor Miranda Devine groused last week. “Convenient smokescreen for today’s House Ways & Means release of IRS whistleblower testimony of DOJ sabotage of the Hunter Biden investigation.” MAGA influencer and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson, after blaming the lost sub on “wokeness,” then claimed it was a “psy-op” to cover up Hunter’s legal troubles. By the weekend, though, the mainstream media had moved on from the sub and instead focused on the Wagner Group’s “armed rebellion” against the Kremlin. According to Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, who once wondered whether the invasion of Ukraine was a “ruse” to distract from Hillary Clinton, the Biden administration was “drumming up” coverage of the mutiny to keep Hunter out of the headlines. “The White House wanted to give the media something else to cover, and this is the MO,” she said on Fox & Friends Sunday. “This is exactly the way they do things.” Bartiromo wasn’t the only Fox star to push this conspiracy theory. One-time MTV reality star Rachel Campos-Duffy also repeatedly wondered if the Biden administration or NATO was behind the chaos in Russia. Read more here.
