• It used to be that leaving Fox News or any other major media outlet was the end of your career.

• No longer. Ask two former Fox hosts, Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, or Bari Weiss, an ex-New York Times editor.

• Chris Balfe, who helps these stars find an audience and make money through podcasts and YouTube, says there will be more doing the same.

The 2024 election was a podcast election and one YouTube selection.

There was also something else new at play here: It was an election in which several people who used to have high-profile, influential seats at major mainstream media organizations found new, influential perches on the Internet, at companies they built and own. People like the former Fox News plays Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, and former New York Times writer and editor Bari Weiss.

This was an idea we’ve heard about for a long time, and one we saw put into practice back in 2011 – when Glenn Beck Split with Fox News and started TheBlaze, his own subscription streaming service. But until recently, we hadn’t seen many following in his footsteps. Now it starts to become a worn path.

I wanted to understand why this is happening now and how it works, so I asked one man directly involved: Chris Balfe, CEO of Red Seat Ventures — a company that has helped Carlson, Kelly and Weiss launch their podcast and streaming businesses and sells ads for them. Not coincidentally, Balfe used to work with Beck at TheBlaze (the duo had a messy divorce).

As Balfe explains, the Big Media-to-the-internet route won’t work for everyone. I also don’t want to overstate the trend. Although traditional media like cable television is in declineit will be with us for a while. See: Donald Trumpwho wants to fill his administration with people he’s seen on Fox — just like he did in his first term.

But talking to Balfe gives you a good sense of what goes on behind the scenes, and the challenges that still remain for stars who want to make the leap. You can listen to our entire conversation on my “Channels” podcast; here’s an edited excerpt from our chat.

More than a decade ago, you worked with Glenn Beck, who left Fox News and started TheBlaze. At the time, it seemed like we were going to see more people do what he did – leave mainstream media, go digital and build an audience there. But that didn’t really happen until the last few years. Why did it take so long and why is it happening now?

Two things. One is that the technology and tools have caught up in a big way. When we launched TheBlaze, we had to email people’s Roku boxes and say, “Plug this into the back of your TV. You might need something called an HDMI cable. We’ll send one of those if you want a.”

Would you literally email your subscribers Roku boxes?

Yes. And explain to them how to download an app and watch it. And so clearly, with every TV in the world having connectivity, and every toaster in the world having connectivity, the technical barrier and user behavior is gone.

Sixty million people just saw Mike Tyson and Jake Paul.

Exactly. The other change is the monetization side. Where’s the dollar?

When we think about people being in both a linear network and a digital space, it’s easier to scale, faster to scale and potentially more lucrative in the digital space.

You’re saying it’s potentially more lucrative than a traditional big-dollar TV contract?

It definitely depends on the talent. We talk to people who want to leave traditional media, and we hear how much money they’re making, and we say, “Wow, that’s great for you. And if I model how long it’s going to take you to make that, if we’re successful, it might be three years before you can make that kind of money again. And that’s if we’re successful — we might not be.

So for many people, we suggest you hang on to those big, fat media paychecks for as long as you can. If you’re trying to replace a $2 million a year salary, it’s going to take time. Unless you’re Tucker Carlson.

Is there a certain kind of person who works well in traditional media who can also succeed digitally?

What doesn’t work is someone who is there because of the time period they are on TV. So if you’re a nightly news anchor — no offense to the nightly news anchors — you’re unlikely to succeed as a podcaster because you’re getting paid $5, $10, $15 million a year. And if you were out that night and your “B” host walks in, (the ratings) are probably exactly the same.

But shouldn’t the exposure you get on mainstream media be enough to bring some of your audience to digital?

I would say mostly not. There’s certainly a fandom component to it, and that’s the dark art part of it — when each person comes to us and we try to evaluate (the power of their fandom).

People – agents, in particular – always say, “Is it the number of Facebook followers, or followers on X or whatever?” It’s not really any of those things. It is to watch the program. It’s listening and talking to people about how they react to this person. And would you proverbially walk over broken glass (for them)? Because we change you from a push medium to a pull medium. And that means people will want to have to pull.

When Tucker Carlson was pushed from Fox, were you concerned that his work wouldn’t translate to digital?

Definitely not. I felt very strongly that Tucker should have the #1 podcast in the country. Or #2, depending on how fast Joe Rogan growing.

Why him, compared to any other person who is on TV with a large audience?

The answer is his ability to be at the forefront of creating media moments rather than covering media moments.

This is one of the things we talk about a lot in the news, and especially in right-of-center news: There are a lot of podcasts, YouTube shows, TV shows, and radio shows where news happens, and they react to it. It’s interesting because they’re interesting people, but that’s kind of the end of it. There are a few personalities who have the ability to create news cycles rather than react to news cycles.

Glenn Beck was a big one when he was on Fox News, in particular, but also on TheBlaze. And I would absolutely point to Tucker Carlson and say, “This is a must-watch person — not just for the right, but for everybody trying to figure out what the hell he’s talking about.”

He is exciting, inflammatory. Both. That’s him visiting Vladimir Putin.

And Megyn is doing that more and more right now. The coverage that Megyn receives all over the internet for every single thing she says or does right now is truly astounding. I haven’t seen anything like this since the Glenn Beck Fox News days, where there is news value coming out of all her podcasts these days.

I also think it’s moving toward this shift that we’ve been talking about, where whatever happened on podcasts for a long time happened between the ears of people listening and didn’t manage to get out into the rest of the world.

And now the top podcasts are making news more often—not because the shows have gotten better, but because people are paying more attention and realizing that great content is happening there.

How does the money work? There used to be a stigma around advertising in right-wing, conservative spaces in general and podcasts in general, for various reasons. Looks like you’re still struggling with that – you don’t get blue-chip advertisers on Tucker Carlson’s show.

It’s true that it’s rare that we see any Fortune 500 company spending big dollars in any controversial area: news, true crime, right-of-center politics, left-of-center politics. “Brand safety” is still something that big brands are concerned about – obsessed with, in some cases – and so they avoid all the politics and all the news and all the true crime and everything else that people like to listen to.

What is most valuable to you right now, a podcast listener or a YouTube viewer?

A podcast listener, if they subscribe to the podcast feed on Spotify or Apple, is the most valuable because they are the stickiest. They spend the most time with a particular show. There are automatic downloads, when it comes to these two apps. And once they follow or subscribe, they’ll get every episode. They are more likely to agree with us. They have more lifetime value.

They haven’t produced a credit card, but it’s almost as if they have. They have committed to you in some way.

And then they start having a mental meeting in their own brain about, “How often does this show come out? When am I going to make time in my daily life to listen to that show?” There really is more of a commitment to podcast listening.

On YouTube, it’s still very valuable to us. But of the people who come and watch YouTube, 70% of those people are not subscribers to our channel. They are recommended algorithmically.

And the two concerns that I have about it is one – obviously they’re not as big of a fan. So they may not be as responsive to advertising. Or they might watch one video and not the next. And two — we’ve all been through algorithmic hell before with Facebook and every other platform.

The algorithm that got them there is an algorithm that couldn’t get them there tomorrow.

Sure.

Read the original article at Business Insider