Trump News Network launched last night with the prime-time coming from his rally in Tampa.
As we reported Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will be launching a news network win or lose after the 2016 election with Democrat Hillary Clinton comes to an end two weeks from tonight. It began with a “soft launch,” on Facebook Live with a new nightly newscast airing at 6:30 p.m. ET up against the national news.
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Also read: His next career Trump News Network
The network premiered last night with Trump’s live coverage of his rally from Tampa in primetime, but the first program was a nightly newscast. The Trump News airing each night is hosted by Boris Epshteyn, a senior advisor to the campaign, Cliff Sims, another Trump advisor, and Tomi Lahren, a commentator for The Blaze, the program broadcasts from Trump Tower and will stream the candidate’s rallies along with commentary each night.
Thee nightly live stream provides the campaign a way to get around the mainstream media, which Trump has routinely attacked during the election, Epshteyn told Wired.
“We all know how strong the left wing media bias is,” he said. “This is us delivering our message to voters. It has nothing to do with Trump TV. It’s about using 21st century technology and communication in a way that’s effective.”
The network did a test run last Wednesday with pre-debate and post – debate shows airing live from Las Vegas. The program was one of the most watched events in Facebook Live history and that was with very little promotion at all.
Former Breitbart executive Steven Bannon, and now the CEO of the Donald Trump for President campaign has his figure prints all over this project. He has been at the forefront of all types of new media from his early days at Breitbart.
Trump has been pushing throughout his campaign the narrative that the mainstream press wants to see Hillary Clinton as president. He has over the past month or so, amped that message up and just yesterday at his rally in Tampa he said, “The media isn’t just against me, they’re against all of you.” He told the attendees that he is their voice, adding, “I will never let you be the forgotten people again.”
The campaign’s decision to take its message straight to the Facebook masses says as much about Trump’s future in media as it does about Facebook’s. Facebook Live has dominated this election cycle, with 365 days’ worth of Live content going out during the Republican and Democratic conventions alone.
If this is the beginning of a media franchise, there is precedence for a major news outlet to sprout out of a single national event, notes in an interview recently with Wired. Rick Edmonds, a media analyst at the Poynter Institute talked about launching a show or a network from a single event.
Nightline began as a temporary show about the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. “Having the last days of the election as [Trump TV’s] calling card makes perfect sense,” he says. But whether Trump’s Live broadcasts will be an audience building exercise for a future television network or not, the fact is, Trump hardly needs TV to disseminate his message anymore. His Twitter feed is already the equivalent of must-see-TV. A Facebook Live stream is just an extension of that.
“I have always thought that starting a network—getting set up, cable deals, all that kind of thing—even for Mr. Trump, is a pretty formidable undertaking,” says Edmonds. “Some kind of streaming service would make a lot more sense.”
Meanwhile, taking the Trump News Network to streaming video world is the next step and launching a channel that can be accessed by cord cutters worldwide along with brand names like Netflix and Hulu makes great sense.
Trump could charge his subscribers a fee of $5 dollars a month and with just 10 million of his likely 40 plus million followers signing up he hits big numbers quick. How is $600 million a year without a single sponsor signed to the dotted line.
The Trump News Network is here already now it is simply a matter of growing it as quickly as possible.
