Hollywood Faces a Reboot of the Trump Show

We’re on day two of the timeline where Donald Trump is headed back to the White House, and like so much of America (and the world), the TV industry is still very much trying to make sense of what just took place — and what comes next. Given that a man who said he would be a “dictator on day one” is about to return to power, let’s acknowledge that what it all means for show business is pretty far down on most people’s list of concerns right now. I cover Hollywood for a living, and even I struggle to get too worked up about what Trump’s impact will be on the TV and streaming worlds. 

And yet, the new administration will absolutely shake up the current order of things, in both ways large and small. Given how unpredictable life was the last time Trump was in charge, I think it’s foolish for anyone to make many definitive predictions about what will change come January 20, especially so soon after the election. But it’s not too early to start thinking about where the incoming regime might make an impact. Here are five of the most pressing questions I have right now. 

1. Will a Trump administration make it more likely that entertainment conglomerates will partner up or merge?

Chatter about the inevitability of consolidation within the streaming world has been going on for well over a year now, with a widespread expectation that at some point, a couple of major platforms will either merge or go away. But other than the still-in-process Paramount Global/Skydance deal, not much has happened to date, in part because the industry wanted to see what happened with the election. As CNBC’s Alex Sherman reported last summer, folks like Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav think the Biden administration has been overly tough in regulating companies like his. “We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to be even better,” Zaslav said earlier this year at the annual Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley. And speaking on the WBD earnings call today, Zaslav made it clear he thinks Trump’s return will be good for his bottom line, saying the new administration “may offer a pace of change and an opportunity for consolidation that may be quite different, that would provide a real positive and accelerated impact on this industry that’s needed. There needs to be some consolidation in order to have these businesses be stronger.”

But while it’s true that Republican administrations have been far more open to approving job-killing mergers like the ones Zaslav has excelled at during his career, I’m not so sure a Trump Justice Department will be more likely to give the go-ahead to the mergers or partnerships that folks like Zaslav believe are essential to their efforts to compete against the likes of Netflix and Amazon. After all, it was Trump’s White House that slow-walked AT&T’s acquisition of the old Time Warner because, per reporting from The New Yorker in 2019, Trump personally asked for it to be blocked because of his anger at CNN. And with tech figures like Elon Musk heavily allied with Trump, plus folks like Jeff Bezos and Apple’s Tim Cook rushing to congratulate and praise Trump’s wins, it’s quite possible Trump’s team will not want to do any favors to old media companies. The further disintegrations of legacy media is something they probably welcome. None of this means mergers won’t happen or that Trump’s White House will be tougher than Biden’s in terms of regulation. I’m just not sure it’s the slam dunk some people think it is.

2. Do progressive and centrist viewers return to MSNBC and CNN?

Cable-news audiences plunged during the Biden years, in part because the lack of the nonstop drama and crises that characterized Trump’s first term provided less reason to tune in regularly. The change in fortunes was even evident on Election Night: CNN attracted half as many viewers in primetime as it did in 2020, while MSNBC–which beat CNN on an election evening for the first time ever– was also down (though not as dramatically.) To be sure, the other major reason for the decline is because there are simply far fewer people watching cable TV at all than there were even five years ago. Trump’s return isn’t going to reverse the long-term trendline. But what I’ll be watching for is whether the liberal resistance that contributed to massive Nielsen gains for MSNBC between 2017 and 2020, and which helped CNN’s audience jump on really big news days, shows up for Trump 2: Dictator Boogaloo. I’m not so sure it will, at least not as dramatically as it did before.

This could be my own projection, but I think many liberal viewers are ready to check out of politics for a while and might not want to marinate in it on MSNBC. Ratings will go up, especially if Rachel Maddow starts hosting more than once a week again, as I suspect she might. But I’m not sure the gains will be as impressive as last night. As for CNN: The network that made fighting back against Trump’s endless lies part of its whole identity back when Jeff Zucker was in charge is now controlled by Zaslav, who has made no secret of his belief that CNN was too tough on Trump. Under his watch, CNN became more boring and more open to platforming Trump apologists, and the result has been catastrophic to its ratings. It seems doubtful the numbers will move that much, though if Trump really does go full dictator mode …

3. Does Trump’s return make it even more likely one of the major broadcast networks gets out of the national news business?

First, let’s be clear: I’ve seen zero reporting suggesting anyone at Disney (ABC), Comcast (NBC), or Paramount Global (CBS) wants to eliminate their respective news divisions completely. There’s still money to be made in producing morning shows, and their respective local stations all need some way of covering national and global events. That said, in recent years we’ve seen all the networks not only reduce staffing for news but get rid of some of their highest-paid anchors and make greater use of local-news talent on their national shows. And as budgets get even tighter, and ratings smaller, I’m pretty sure at least one of these companies might at least consider whether outsourcing their news needs makes more sense. Warner Bros. Discovery would surely welcome the chance to monetize CNN by providing reporting content to one of the broadcast networks, who could still have a few of their own star anchors. (Think CBS Mornings Powered by CNN … or even Fox News.)

4. Will streamers and networks become less open to programming from diverse audiences, and push for even more right-coded content?

Even before Trump won back the White House, there were signs Hollywood was, sadly and predictably, backtracking on the progress it had been making toward hiring more women and people of color, and in making shows and movies which speak to broader audiences. Part of this has simply been about the end of Peak TV and the overall contraction in programming: Studios and platforms are making less, period, and streamers are looking for big, broad hits, and not shows deemed (often unfairly) as more “niche.” But we’ve also seen platforms start pushing to find shows that serve audiences that might be more, let’s just say, Trump friendly: Amazon earlier this year did a deal to make “faith-based” programming, while Netflix has gotten into making biblical docuseries (and of course Paramount+ has long been turning into the Real America Streamer with its endless Taylor Sheridan content).

I don’t think major streamers are about to go full MAGA, but I’m worried about how far platforms will go now to avoid criticism from Trump, whose campaign leaned into making diversity, equity, and inclusion programs a boogeyman. It’s not a stretch to envision scenarios where projects deemed “too political” are left languishing out of fear of provoking the ire of the MAGA movement and the Trump regime. We’ve seen Netflix and Amazon pull content from international markets when local governments objected. Would they react differently if the U.S. government starts complaining? What’s more, it would not be surprising at all if platforms started finding ways to make more shows that appeal to the voters who put Trump back in power. Joe Rogan already has had a couple stand-up specials on Netflix; what better way to defend against charges of being “woke” than for a streamer to give him his own development deal? 

5. Will anti-Trump programming make a comeback?

Conversely, while Trump’s last White House stint was good for resistance-friendly programming (everything from The Good Place, The Good Fight, and The Handmaid’s Tale to just about every late-night talk show), it’s hard to imagine post–Peak TV streamers giving the go-ahead to that many overtly political show rights now. It’s not that liberal Hollywood has warmed to Trump in any way. But the folks who write the checks have become more risk- and conflict-averse, and relentlessly focused on turning a profit in streaming (or, in the case of Netflix, maximizing its profits). There will no doubt still be a resistance against Trump, but as of right now, it’s sadly hard to imagine it will come from the television business.