NewsNation and Megyn Kelly Bet Big on Fourth GOP Debate
By Jon Friedman, December 5, 2023
NewsNation, like a poker player putting all the chips in the center of the table on a make-or-break deal, is all in on tonight’s Republican debate.
It has to be.
For the upstart, two-year-old cable news network, the debate symbolizes a sort of Hail Mary. NewsNation is a very longshot to make enough of a splash to be mentioned in the same breath with the big boys – Fox News Channel, MSNBC and CNN.
Claims of No Bias
Since its inception, the Nexstar Media Group unit has been a news network in search of a sensation. NewsNation has billed itself as a sort of anti-Fox and anti-MSNBC, two networks with obvious political biases. NewsNation proudly claims not to have a bias in the way it airs the news.
It’s bet was that neutrality and dignity would appeal to viewers exhausted by networks that cover the blow-by-blow daily news as if it were a 15-round prize fight. So far, though the Chicago-based NewsNation is available on most cable providers in the U.S., it has failed to make a dent. I can’t say I’ve rushed to NewsNation during a big news story to get its take.
And if it can’t make a splash by broadcasting the fourth GOP presidential smackdown, it may never truly challenge Fox.
Contender or Afterthought?
In a way, News Nation is to Fox as Nikki Haley and the other 2024 Republican presidential pretenders – with the polls the way they are now, we can’t yet really label them as “contenders,” now, can we? – are to former President Donald Trump: an afterthought.
The wannabes are so far behind Trump at the moment they are little more than a sideshow. But anything is possible in politics – and, NewsNation hopes against hope that the same can be true in the media biz.
Opportunity for Kelly
NewsNation is not alone in eyeing the fourth debate as a big opportunity. Moderator Megyn Kelly, no stranger to presiding over Republican presidential debates, has her own agenda. Kelly famously questioned then-candidate Donald Trump’s treatment of women during a televised debate on Aug. 6, 2015. In the aftermath, a furious Trump notoriously said about Kelly: “There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” Later, he claimed he was referring to Kelly’s nose when he said “wherever.”
The incident has dogged Kelly, fair or not, ever since. Now, at least, she’ll have a chance to re-establish herself on one of TV journalism’s bigger stages.
Vulnerable But Still On Top
Fox may be more vulnerable these days than it has been in years, with the messy exit of its biggest star, Tucker Carlson, the stunning $787.5 million judgment in the Dominion Voting Systems case and the step back by Rupert Murdoch, the inspiration behind the creation of the Fox News Channel in 1996.
Nevertheless, Fox remains alone at the top of the 2023 cable news power rankings.
While NewsNation may have higher ideals than its better-known rivals, its high-mindedness is basically an asterisk. Not only does it not have a bias,it proclaims that this is its strategy to the millions of cable news addicts who demand red-meat content night after night. It has not gained a foothold, probably because of its insistence on covering the news without a bias.
Big News May Not Be Enough
The tantalizing aspect of TV news is the unpredictable nature of what the networks cover each night. On Oct. 6, the Hamas threat against Israel was not something most people worried about. But 24 hours later, it was an international obsession after Hamas’ horrific, audacious attack on Israel.
Before Nov. 17, did you spend much time thinking about the saga of a Silicon Valley executive named Sam Altman? Me neither! Then the board of his company, OpenAI, suddenly fired him and all hell broke loose in the murky world of artificial intelligence – and the story became an obsession for several days.
NewsNation can only hope that the debate somehow makes big breaking news that leaves U.S. media junkies from Miami to Seattle hungry for more. Trouble is, if it happens, those hungry viewers will probably grab the remote and click over to Fox or CNN or MSNBC.
Jon Friedman wrote MarketWatch’s media column from 1999 to 2013 and has taught classes in journalism and other subjects at Stony Brook University. He has written three books and has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Sunday Business Section, The New York Post, Esquire and Time.
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NewsNation can only hope that the debate somehow makes big breaking news that leaves U.S. media junkies hungry for more. Trouble is, if it happens, those hungry viewers will probably grab the remote and click over to Fox, CNN or MSNBC.
