3 ms·

There is only one data point on advertisers. It doesn't matter how many eyes/ears you reach out to. You can have 5%, but if you can twist the arm of the advert

There is only one data point on advertisers. It doesn't matter how many eyes/ears you reach out to. You can have 5%, but if you can twist the arm of the advertisers (the ones who really keep your media company alive), to force them to advertise less on others and more to you (or cut them off completely), then you can slow & steady change the game by controlling the funding of your competition. Yes this is a very simplistic approach, but throw enough 'junk food' out there, lower the level (gossip, reality shows)(trash tv a la Berlusconni) and presto! Edit: I just remembered watching the movie Bombshell (2019), and if the depiction of the Murdoch family is anywhere near the truth, they are utterly disgusting (and complicit).

bobthechef 6y ago
It's not that easy. It's a two way street. Advertisers have enormous power over the viability of media. If you start putting out stuff advertisers don't like, they'll pull out and your paper fails. Subscriptions and reader payment is hardly enough to keep these things afloat. So the idea that you can "just" twist the arms of advertisers is assuming a great deal about the power you have or how media is embedded in society. You would at the very least need to be in a position where not advertising with your newspaper would be foolish from a business perspective. Anyway, all of this sounds like inter-oligarchic squabbling. Each oligarch has his own newspaper or is associated with some newspaper working to shore up interests and entrench power.