{"id":389113,"date":"2026-04-20T18:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T18:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/389113\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T18:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T18:20:09","slug":"will-digital-mavericks-add-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/389113\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Digital Mavericks Add Life?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAlex Wagner has returned to primetime hours on MS NOW<\/a> \u2014 but not in the way viewers might expect.<\/p>\n

\n\tWagner is among a bevy of hosts from progressive outlet Crooked Media<\/a> who can be seen on MS NOW every Saturday night at 9 in clips from the collective\u2019s sundry podcasts. When Wagner held forth as a regular weekday primetime anchor<\/a> on predecessor outlet MSNBC not too long ago, she didn\u2019t often swear or look mischievous. Now viewers can hear her and her colleagues drop a more-than-occasional f-bomb and launch provocative broadsides against the Trump administration that might even make Lawrence O\u2019Donnell blanch.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe show features cruder-than-usual graphics. The hosts are frequently seen with little makeup and shiny faces, speaking to each other from home offices or bare-bones studios. None of it is live.<\/p>\n

\n\tNo matter. Through the first four episodes of the series, which debuted in late February, more than half of the viewers were new to MS NOW on Saturday nights, according to a person familiar with the data, and nearly two-thirds of the audience between the ages of 25 and 54 were new to the timeslot. MS NOW declined to make executives available for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tMany of the nation\u2019s biggest TV-news outlets spent the past year cutting ties with or scaling back the work<\/a> of some of their longest-serving and best-known anchors. Among those who have exited or taken on a smaller range of duties: Hoda Kotb, Andrea Mitchell, Chris Wallace, and Howard Kurtz. \u00a0Here come some potential replacements.<\/p>\n

\n\tMainstream TV-news organizations are fascinated with a group of independent journalists and provocative hosts <\/a>who already operate their own digital-media ventures and want to see them grow quickly. \u201cThe networks are going to where the audience is going. Their audience is going home and scrolling across the iPhone and not watching television,\u201d says Frank Sesno, a professor at George Washington University\u2019s School of Media and Public Affairs. \u201cThe networks are adjusting. Can they be part of this, or is it too little, too late? Or too weird?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMost of the major TV-news organizations are striking new and intriguing deals with so-called \u201ccreators<\/a>.\u201d Some of these digitally savvy personalities are experts in important niches like technology, healthcare or national security. Others are former legacy news anchors, who have gained traction by slinging challenging oratory. But nearly all of them can be had for a price that is significantly less than that of a full-time employee, says Brent Magid, who leads an eponymous consultancy firm that has advised TV networks and stations for decades. What\u2019s more, all of them operate or are members of outside media ventures, meaning that MS NOW, NBC News<\/a>, CBS News and others are hitching their corporate fortunes to people whose top priority may be the health of their own endeavors and not always those of the company employing them.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast week, British news giant Sky Media unveiled a deal with Noosphere, an upstart digital news outlet that works with anchors, journalists and documentarians including Chuck Todd, Brody Mullins and Chris Cilizza, to use its technology to create new ways of featuring reporters who specialize in defense and security with interested audiences. The large CAA talent agency has placed new focus on matching creators with traditional news organizations,<\/a> and in November, enlisted Becky Van Dercook, a former CBS News producer who has experience with managing social media, to advise clients on how to navigate some of the news medium\u2019s newest forms. Piers Morgan, best known in the U.S. as a former primetime talk show host for CNN, has launched a digital-media venture called \u201cUncensored\u201d<\/a> that is working with behind-the scenes financial luminaries including The Raine Group and Antenna Group to raise $30 million to expand programming. Rashida Jones, formerly the president of MSNBC, joined the company in March as CEO.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tNBC News in March unveiled an alliance with technology journalist Joanna Stern, <\/a>who will deliver reports and explainers to NBC News even as she builds her own business. \u201cWe do think that this is a unique partnership and a new model for NBC, and quite frankly, for others,\u201d says Rebecca Blumenstein, NBC News\u2019 president of editorial, during a recent interview. She adds: \u201cWe were mostly interested in a partnership that allows Joanna to do whatever she is going to do, and anchors her exclusively to NBC.\u201d CNN last week tapped Ari Shapiro,<\/a> a veteran of NPR who left it last year, to launch a new podcast opposite Audie Cornish, a CNN host who previously worked at the public-media outlet.<\/p>\n

\n\tSome of the traditional news perches aren\u2019t waiting for creators to come knocking. MS NOW viewers know Nicolle Wallace best for the analysis and interviews she delivers on the weekday staple \u201cDeadline: The White House.\u201d But she has branched off into deeper newsmaker interviews on a podcast, \u201cThe Best People,\u201d that often turns up on the cable schedule.<\/a> CNN spurred much reaction by having Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper test less-professional formats on air. Cooper was spotted in attire that was not a formal as his usual wardrobe, while talking into a big microphone, and Tapper hosted one episode of his show, \u201cThe Lead\u201d from an office festooned with colorful posters. CBS News is eager to find new platforms for current staffers, says Sofia Efthimiatou, senior vice president of talent and brand at CBS News.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe need to occupy the Venn diagram that combines the best of both worlds, of legacy and independent. Nobody has done this so far,\u201d she says. \u201cThis is something we need to imagine first. Ideally, in five years, we will have succeeded.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe industry may have to move even faster. In an era when video podcasters are seeing strong audience growth, \u201cnow is the time to do these deals,\u201d says Magid. \u201cCreators may have the upper hand in the next two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t*******<\/p>\n

\n\tThe media industry has been here before. Not too long ago, traditional companies rushed to strike alliances with a host of digital upstarts including Vice, Buzzfeed and Vox. The philosophy at the time was similar. Younger consumers were gravitating to news and information delivered in new formats and more adventuresome ways. And yet, the digital arrivistes could only gain so much traction with a broader customer base and needed a boost from tie-ins with old-school counterparts<\/a>. All three of the aforementioned companies have since seen their trajectories cool.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf course, this isn\u2019t 2016. Over the past decade, the media sector has become ever more fragmented, except, perhaps, for sports. Individual personalities, podcasters and journalists hold more sway with younger viewers than decades-old newsrooms. Ask Joe Rogan.<\/p>\n

\n\tCBS News is eager to find new voices from these realms, says Bari Weiss, editor in chief of the Paramount Skydance outlet. \u201cThe kind of talent that we are looking for are people who are amphibious. They are capable of, yes, reading off a teleprompter when necessary, but also doing man on the street interviews, speaking fluently in a casual podcast, writing in a clear and crisp way,\u201d she says during a recent interview. \u201cCandidly, what we are asking for of talent in 2026 is a lot. It\u2019s special. And it\u2019s not what has historically been typical. But there are people capable of doing it. We are just always going to be hungry for these people wherever they exist, whether they are inside CBS or if they are on the outside.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFox News moved early on the trend, crafting a licensing pact with the hosts of the popular conservative \u201cRuthless\u201d podcast<\/a> in July. \u201cWe had a number of others who reached out and wanted to figure out a similar relationship,\u201d says John Ashbrook, one of the four \u201cRuthless\u201d podcasters, but \u201cthe only thing\u201d Fox News executives wanted was for the team \u201cto do more of what we were already publishing, and that was very attractive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tExecutives from across the news spectrum say these alliances boost the creators\u2019 audience \u2014 almost immediately. Aaron McLean, a podcaster who specializes in military affairs, joined CBS News as a national security analyst in March, and, says Weiss, \u201csubscriptions to his podcast have more than doubled since he came on.\u201d \u00a0Since signing up with Fox News, \u201cour YouTube subscriptions have doubled,\u201d says Ashbrook. \u201cThat comes within the first six months, comes with the notoriety and the additional opportunities for more people to see our content.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn TV-news circles, there are questions about how far this all can go. Alliances with independents and provocateurs can bring younger crowds to the traditional news fold in an era when such viewership is not guaranteed. And yet, there is worry that one of the new personalities might go rogue; do something that doesn\u2019t adhere to an organization\u2019s journalism standards; or, most challenging, do something controversial on their own platform that becomes associated with the mainstream news venue that employs them.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou have to make sure what they talk about and what they\u2019re good at doing aligns with your brand. You have to make sure that you have a level of trust in them, that they\u2019re not just a live wire that\u2019s going to go off the rails,\u201d says Magid. \u00a0\u201cYou have to do background checks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCBS News recently grappled with such problems after Peter Attia, a celebrated expert on longevity and aging who was hired as a contributor earlier this year, became embroiled in an outside controversy.<\/a> His name was mentioned more than 1,700 times in a raft of documents tied to Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019. Attia was found to have a friendly relationship with Epstein, and that made having him contribute to CBS News programs a difficult feat to accomplish, as he would most likely have to be grilled on the situation.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDr. Attia\u2019s contributor role was newly established and had not yet meaningfully begun. As such, he stepped back to ensure his involvement didn\u2019t become a distraction from the important work being done at CBS,\u201d a spokesman for Attia said at the time. \u201cHe wishes the network and its leadership well and has no further comment at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWeiss declined to comment on the matter, but said of relationships with new voices: \u201cThere are people with an incredible track record of having the kind of guardrails for themselves as independents that we expect and our viewers expect at CBS.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNBC News can rely on past experience with Joanna Stern to guide its relationship in the future, says Blumenstein. \u201cWe know Joanna well, and she\u2019s one of the most informed experts on how technology is shaping our future in every way, and she also knows standards and has worked in a space where those are taken very seriously. We are confident she\u2019s going to bring that to her work at NBC as well,\u201d the executive said, noting that Stern \u201cis also known for being very rigorous and thoughtful about her reporting. That all gives us confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMonitoring these new partners may become a large part of the task of keeping them in the fold. \u201cThis is the big question \u2014 how to manage the moment versus the legacy, how to manage the freewheeling nature of the vertical-video-podcast-influencer world when your reputation has been built on the stoic credibility of traditional journalists,\u201d says Sesno. \u201cThat\u2019s a reputational challenge. It\u2019s a brand challenge. And it\u2019s a mission challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t*******<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a different era, these personalities might have been called \u201ccontributors\u201d or \u201canalysts.\u201d TV-news outlets would sign them to deals and expect them to be available when stories broke tied to areas of their knowledge. An aviation expert was sure to be on hand, then, when a plane crashed, and a former member of the U.S. military would be instantly available in case of war. These arrangements still exist today.<\/p>\n

\n\tYounger audiences would rather hear from independent fact-finders than old-school guests. People who have grown up watching YouTube programs and following TikTok figures feel more comfortable with such personalities, says Magid. Modern consumers \u201care more engaged with them,\u201d he says. \u201cThey probably are able to tell a more engaging story,\u201d\u00a0because they publish their own findings and analysis with a frequent cadence. Approximately 38% of adults under 30 say they regularly get news from news influencers, according to 2025 data from Pew Research, and more likely than older adults to consider someone a journalist if they\u00a0write their own newsletter\u00a0or\u00a0make their own news-related videos or posts on social media.<\/p>\n

\n\tTalent managers are seeing similar dynamics. \u201cThere are certain topical areas where people are more interested in hearing from a creator as opposed to some form of contributor,\u201d notes Hasan Hashmi, an agent at WME who works with several independent journalists. Video podcasters and newsletter writers \u201cprovide a lot of the conversation to audiences that the networks, frankly, don\u2019t reach.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe desire to merge audiences \u2014 younger viewers for the mainstream news groups and broader audiences for the digital upstarts \u2014 is at the crux of many of these new agreements, which are expected to get more ambitious as time progresses.<\/p>\n

\n\tTraditional contributors have typically been lumped into \u201ca one size fits all deal,\u201d says Marc Paskin, co-head of the news and broadcasting department at the large UTA talent agency. \u201cThis is a completely different model, where we have to get into the nuances of each talent\u2019s business and priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJoanna Stern\u2019s deal with NBC News calls for her to work as a correspondent even as she builds out her own operation. She says she welcomes the alliance. \u201cThis is really hard and only for a certain type of person,\u201d she says. \u00a0The \u201cmainstream reach\u201d she will get by working with NBC News can only help. But she\u2019s very mindful that there is a wide swath of people who will only see her via her own venture. When she was working at The Wall Street Journal, she says, \u201cI started realizing I was focusing so much on audiences that were off the main WSJ platform: YouTube, newsletters.\u201d Her hope is to help Americans grapple with all kinds of new technology challenges, including A.I. \u201cThere are ways I can picture growing this to be a new technology hub, and I have thoughts about the next generation of tech journalists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCBS News is now led by an executive who hails from the creator ranks. Weiss launched and built The Free Press, a publication that questions many prevailing attitudes, and sold it to Paramount for a reported $150 million. She thinks her experience gives the organization an edge. \u201cThe job is, can we be the bridge between the authenticity and the freedom and the aliveness of the new world and the scale and resources and standards of the old world?\u201d Weiss asks. \u201cIf we can do that, we will do something really exceptional.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLook for lots of experiments in months to come. The trick is to get creators \u201cin front of audiences that aren\u2019t on Instagram or YouTube, where there is real monetization benefit for the networks,\u201d says Hashmi. \u201cThe more we take swings at this, the more symbiotic the relationship we can create between creators and broadcast talent.\u201d Some people expect that the larger media companies will at some point seek to invest in the upstart businesses, cementing the links they are just now trying to forge. \u201cMy hope is they will expand the aperture of what they would consider,\u201d says Paskin.<\/p>\n

\n\tJoanna Stern says she\u2019s not quite ready for that discussion. \u00a0First, she must get her business off the ground. NBC News\u2019 Blumenstein seems open to the possibility: \u201cWe hope to have a long standing relationship with Joanna\u00a0 and we will see what happens.\u201d So too will the rest of the news business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Wagner has returned to primetime hours on MS NOW \u2014 but not in the way viewers might…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[26250,201429,156,27958,27960,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-389113","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-creators","9":"tag-crooked-media","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ms-now","12":"tag-nbc-news","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}