1/ Given all the recent revelations about Fox News' internal machinations from the Dominion filings, I'd like to give a sense of just how delicate this moment is for Fox..
I'll start with advertisers, then talk about cable agreements and close with likely cascading litigation
2/ Advertisers. Fox News is already suffering with advertisers quite a bit. Yea, they have MyPillow and vegetable pill sponsors. But, overall, advertising isn'tas robust as it could be -- especially for prime time.
For ex, Fox is currently Fox News' 4th biggest advertiser. Weird
3/ For the most part though, the really big and beloved brands largely eschew Fox. That said, pharmaceutical companies heavily advertise on Fox and then it's companies like @GM and @LibertyMutual that are largely left funding Fox partisan deceptions.
4/ By now though, most people know that advertising revenue is really just gravy on top for Fox. They could have $0 in ad revenue and they'd still have a 90% profit margin. That's because they have guaranteed revenue from cable companies.
5/ Every cable company pays a fee to channels to carry them - it's called a carriage fee. It's usual a nominal fee though. Not for Fox News.
Fox News is the second most expensive channel on every one's cable bill (ESPN is #1). And that is by design.
6/ About 10 years ago, Fox News set out to leverage their rabid audience and insulate themselves from pressures of the ad industry.
I won't get into how they did it. But short of it is, they lied and bullied their way into getting cable companies to massively overpay for Fox Ne
7/ Why's this matter? Well, Fox News has to renegotiate about 60% of all their cable contracts over the next year.
And they not only need to keep their currently inflated rate, they need to actually increase it by quite a bit to offset the ad losses.
8/ These Dominion revelations are going to make it a lot harder for their efforts to be successful.
There are ~90M cable subscribers. 87M who never touch Fox News are forced to basically pay a premium channel fee for it -- and now Fox wants more. Very winnable consumer fight.
9/ You all saw how effective these efforts were at getting cable companies to rethink their relationships with OAN and Newsman. It can absolutely happen with Fox.
Want more? You can sign up at unfoxmycablebox.com
10/ There actually hasn't been renewals to really fight about yet, but they are coming. And in fact, the people that signed up at UnFox got an email back in December and helped ensure that Fox lost its very first carriage fight in its history.
More on horizon.
11/ Lastly, these Dominion revelations expose Fox/Murdochs to additional liability. Make no mistake, Shareholders will file lawsuits in the coming months. I have already seen about half a dozen firms post noticed looking for clients to file such lawsuits.
12/ The effects on the Murdochs/Fox will cascade.
But only if consumers act and ensure that Fox isn't about to force through massive increases in carriage fees and if media/others treat Fox like political operation that it is and not prop up veneer that it's a news network.
13/ Posting an update because the cascade is starting.
The efforts to formalize legal action by shareholders is ramping up.
mediamatters.org/rupert-murdoch…
14/ Rupert Murdoch took an ad buy Biden campaign made and shared info with the Trump campaign before it was public. As well as other things.
It's an in-kind contribution and violation of law. Media Matters drafting formal FEC complaint. Expect others to submit similar complaints
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