Which Media Firms Are Benefiting Most From President Trump?

In spite of stunted political access since President Donald Trump took office, or perhaps because of information barriers and the repeated denunciation of media firms, sector players have recently done well for themselves.

“In an odd way, the Trump administration has been the media’s friend,” Rick Edmonds, Poynter’s media business analyst, told Adweek. “He’s so restless and impulsive, and he wants to dominate the news cycle.”

TV Winners

Right-leaning Fox News continues to dominate overall ratings. In fact, the Twenty-First Century Fox Inc FOXA subsidiary posted 27-percent year-over-year growth in day viewers last quarter to contribute to the highest-rated quarter in the history of cable news.

Meanwhile, MSNBC, a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation CMCSA’s NBCUniversal, recently boasted its best primetime ratings in three years, with figures up more than 100 percent. It closed the first quarter with 55-percent year-over-year growth in day viewership, which doesn’t even account for the increasingly popular “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

The same period brought Turner Broadcasting System’s CNN a 22-percent viewership pop, launching the firm to its most-watched first quarter in 14 years.

Paperboy Profits

Print and online media players have equally benefited.

Throughout the last few months, New York Times Co NYT has celebrated ironic boosts from Trump’s frequent references to the “failing New York Times.”

Just ahead of a politically motivated #ShowYourCancellation campaign, the company finished the first quarter with a digital news subscription expansion of 308,000 units and a subsequent 40-percent year-over-year pop in circulation revenues. President and CEO Mark Thompson called the period “the single best quarter for subscriber growth in our history.”

Gannett Co Inc GCI’s USA Today also saw a swell in unique digital visitors, with first-quarter digital subscriptions up 73 percent year-over-year and 10 percent sequentially.

Over the same period, News Corp NWSA’s the Wall Street Journal posted a 34-percent year-over-year increase in daily digital subscribers.

The Jonathan Swift Effect

Media deviating from the norm of objectivity proved no less influential among consumers, with satirical platforms making massive gains on critical political analyses.

Both NBCUniversal’s Saturday Night Live and CBS Corporation CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert capitalized on unexpected and incomprehensible government activity through a scheduled lambasting of officials. Since Trump's campaign, the shows’ condemnatory approaches earned SNL a season-over-season audience expansion of 32 percent and Colbert 11 percent.

Comedy Central hopes to draw comparable crowds for a new late-night series, “The President Show,” featuring standard talk show interviews and field reporting spun by Trump impersonator Anthony Atamanuik.

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