Dan Abrams has a message about his new online channels: It’s YouTube’s world, and the rest of us are living in it.
That’s why the Mediaite founder launched a channel weeks ago where he opines on the day’s news. Now he is partnering with three prominent former TV journalists to add channels and increase his reach. He says he’s “betting on YouTube for Mediaite.”
The new faces include former Fox and CNN anchors Alisyn Camerota and Dave Briggs, and CNN’s former chief White House correspondent Jessica Yellin, who now has a site called News Not Noise. He expects many more to come.
“These are people who, regardless of what their politics are, have opinions and are entertaining,” Abrams told me.
His new venture is based on a down-the-middle approach to news and opinion. There’s plenty of competition on YouTube, and he knows his new channels may simply get lost among all the shouting.
But I hope he succeeds because that would blaze a trail for other serious-minded journalists and pave the way for more intelligent conversations that can drive the news without shouting and screaming to get attention.
He is talking to more potential partners “who are not known for being hard-core partisans on one side or the other. That’s kind of the brand that we’re pursuing. Does that mean that we will never take on someone who is more partisan? No. But it means that, for now, the brand that we are pursuing is … underserved in that way. We also think that the talent has been underserved on YouTube.”
He’s right. Working in the media for more than 35 years, it is the yelling and shouting that gets ratings. As a panelist on particularly contentious cable shows like Hardball, The O’Reilly Factor, and Megyn Kelly’s show, the hosts loved when I would volley with them, bringing controversial opinions to the screen. In the beginning of my career, I worked in local news in D.C. and my reporting on crimes and murders often led the newscasts. People say they want impartial news, but it doesn’t usually grab viewers.
Dan Abrams is a successful entrepreneurial businessman, TV and web host, and author. His track record proves it. He recently walked away from a nightly news show on NewsNation, saying he ran out of time to focus on his businesses. He agrees that not many journalists would do that. In addition to founding Mediaite, he still hosts a SiriusXM radio show, owns a vineyard (is that his secret?), which led to founding Bottle Raiders, a spirit-rating website, and is ABC’s chief legal correspondent. What’s more, he launched a reality TV series — On Patrol: Live — for the Reelz network. He used to run MSNBC as the General Manager.
But for all of his entrepreneurial accomplishments, he’s basing his YouTube launch on the success of the multiplatform Law&Crime site. Its YouTube channel has about 7 million subscribers. He sold it and is reported to have brought in a very lucrative amount, boosting his confidence that this move could work.
Look, YouTube is awash in garbage. That’s partly why people love it. They can get whatever they want for free. They can search for cat videos, political sniping, or sleaze. It can be a cesspool out there. Users drown themselves in this stuff. But it can also be informative.
Owned by Google, it’s the world’s second most visited website. It has about 2.5 billion monthly users who watch a billion hours of video a day. Its most viewed video was Baby Shark Dance with 15 billion views. Most major networks have YouTube channels, with content ranging from clips to full episodes to behind-the-scenes episodes.
In our 40-minute conversation, Abrams acknowledged this is a roll of the dice.
“I’m not fooling myself into believing that somehow there’s going to be an easy road to success, the way you’ve seen with the partisan extreme,” he told me. “Because it’s true that in a world where people choose who to follow, very often they want to hear their own views reinforced. But I also do believe that as long as we have people who have something unique and special, we can be successful.
“Anyone who wants to do a newscast, I mean that’s not going to work.” If someone says to him, “Well, I just want to do interesting interviews,” he probably wouldn’t hire them, “unless that person is a really, really big name who has their own following.”
I’m rooting for Abrams, and others like him, because he’s pulling a traditional media business into a video era built around clips and interviews that also must be entertaining. If he fails, YouTube, for all its strengths, could become a nastier and more polarizing place.
“I don’t write off the power of cable or broadcast news. I just recognize that it is it is slowly shrinking, and as it shrinks, I want to be there to try to catch some of the the people who are trying to figure out what’s next, people who are really good and entertaining and engaging will always have a place, I think, in the new media ecosystem, and I want to provide a home for those kinds of people,” Abrams told me.
On a personal note, he says it’s “super fun” and “incredibly rewarding” to move a business forward. And as an added bonus — because he isn’t tied to a cable news desk every weeknight — he can spend more time with his two young children.
As we talked, he was driving in his car with his four-year-old in the backseat. As a mom with three kids who has done the same thing, I know, business aside, that is true multitasking.
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Trying to keep up with the avalanche of changes to the media world. Thanks, Lauren, for helping me manage❤️