Trump wine may go down like Listerine, and a diploma from Trump University is probably best used for wiping up small spills around the house. But one Trump business is thriving, though not necessarily for the president: Trump Media Inc.
Trump is doing for TV ratings and print subscriptions what President Obama did for gun sales: sending them through the roof.
Just this week, 48 million watched Trump give his first address to a joint session of Congress, compared with 33 million who watched the Oscars, proving he’s the greatest show on Earth — and a gift to the media’s profit margins.
Since turning the entire show into a Trump piñata, “Saturday Night Live” is having its best season in 23 years. That’s amazing when you consider the rapidly increasing dispersion of the TV audience. So here’s a more shocking number: When Melissa McCarthy first turned up in a surprise guest shot to lampoon White House press secretary Sean Spicer, “SNL” was the second-highest rated show of the entire week in the 18-49 demographic that advertisers most covet, including prime time shows. (“The Big Bang Theory” was No. 1.)
The following week, which featured another McCarthy appearance, “SNL” did even better, logging the show’s best ratings since a January 2011 broadcast, which benefitted from following an NFL game.
Trump is also Making America Grin Again over at the Stephen Colbert show. Six months ago Colbert was about to get fired from “The Late Show,” with James Corden being teed up to replace him.
Then: Nov. 8. Colbert initially reacted with a giant case of the sads, on Showtime on election night. “The happiest thought I can think of,” he said then, was, “Perhaps something worse than this will happen to me one day.”
But Colbert quickly rebounded and made “Late Show” the center of the late-night Resistance. He has now beaten the content-free comic Jimmy Fallon of “The Tonight Show” four weeks in a row in overall viewership, and for a simple reason: He does 40 percent more Trump jokes than the average of Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Trevor Noah of “The Daily Show,” reports S. Robert Lichter, who tracks such things for George Mason University’s Center for Media and Public Affairs. (Fallon continues to enjoy a lead over Colbert in the 18-49 bracket, which is more important in the industry than the overall viewership.)
CNN? Up more than 50 percent in the 25-54 demographic this year over last. MSNBC? Up more than 30 percent. Fox News is up over 50 percent as well. Guess what all three networks have in common?
Vanity Fair says its subscriptions had a record-setting day after it earned itself a derogatory tweet from the Media Critic in Chief. The New York Times said subscriptions were up tenfold in the final weeks of 2016 compared with the same period in 2015, and it added 276,000 digital subscribers in its best quarter since it started charging for them. The Wall Street Journal saw a 300 percent spike in subscriptions the day after Trump’s victory.
Not by coincidence, most of the above entities have abandoned neutrality when it comes to Trump. Openly taking sides is turning out to be a very profitable tactic.
Colbert, whose first “Late Show” featured an interview with Jeb Bush, has given up trying to reel in any non-liberal viewers. The Times infamously advised journalists to “throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century” and ���move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional.” The Washington Post installed a Trump-trolling motto (“Democracy Dies in Darkness”) on its front page. Both the Times and CNN have shamed themselves by publishing anti-Trump stories that make bold implications in their headlines that evaporate as the details emerge.
Whether it’s Melissa McCarthy or The New York Times, going berserk about Trump is a proven way to get paid.
“US investigators corroborate some aspects of the Russia dossier,” blared a Feb. 10 CNN headline about an unsubstantiated file of Trump gossip. Oh? Yet “CNN has not confirmed whether any content relates to then-candidate Trump.” Oh.
The Times’ Feb. 14 bombshell, which ran under the headline, “Trump campaign aides had repeated contact with Russian intelligence” also failed to detonate. It turns out that intelligence agencies “had seen no evidence” of Team Trump “colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.” Hey, Times, can I get some fries with that nothingburger?
So Trump is right to cast a jaundiced eye on much of the media. Americans should do the same. Whether it’s Melissa McCarthy or The New York Times, going berserk about Trump is a proven way to get paid.
As CBS Chairman Les Moonves put it a year ago, “The money’s rolling in and this is fun … Bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”
The next time some insufferable media type tries to tell you about what is or isn’t good for America, remember the other amazingly frank Moonves remark about Trumpism: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”