Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
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.