Noah Oppenheim’s TV News Survival Guide

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1:01It is Tuesday, April 14th. We have a return guest today. The illustrious, the esteemed Noah Oppenheim, former head of NBC News back when I worked there actually. We've had him on before. As you know, Noah is in his Hollywood era again, making, you know, Netflix shows with Robert De Niro and award-winning cinema, like House of Dynamite, which is most recent. Noah's great. Noah's perspective on the television industry, television news, and particularly just how the media industry is changing is always invaluable and always delivered with wit and charm. And so I loved having him on. It must have been probably six or nine months ago. And it was eager to have him on again. For no other reason than that top of my mind recently has just been

2:01that long inexorable decline of linear television, particularly television news that I have been talking about ad nauseam for years really feels like it's it's arrived. It's been arriving for a long time, but it really feels like we're there. And a lot of people are trying to navigate the transition. Particularly a lot of people who work in the industry. Very curious what it means to save CNN, save CBS news. Can MS now exist in the way that MSNBC did? I am constantly preoccupied and intrigued by these questions. And I think how those institutions endure or transform or at least preserve themselves in some way, shape, or form is a paramount interest to the industry. So I wanted to bring Noah on to talk about all of that. And we're going to do it in a nice tight little 20 to 30 minute window for you today

3:07in the spirit of efficiency. This is our edition of smart brevity. And without further ado, let's get started. No, welcome back to the grill room. Thanks so much for having me. Good to see you again. Thank you for coming back in. Quick question before we get started. Do you regret leaving television news? You've gone big Hollywood. House of dynamite. Last time we were on, we talked about zero day. Your name your name graces the billboards of my morning commute. I'm very sorry to hear that. I do not regret leaving television news. I don't think I would regret it regardless of where I've landed now. But I do miss I do miss many of my former colleagues, but I don't not miss the life. Every time anyone asks me about Noah up in Hama, the only thing I say is last chopper out of Saigon and it's all that I say.

4:07Look, here's I will be candid with you and with my listeners. I usually have folks on with some sort of news hook. I don't have a news hook today. What I have is a sort of broader existential question, which is this. I've been writing about even when I was at NBC under you, I've been writing about the decline of television news, linear and broadcast for probably well over a decade now. I feel it so tangibly that we have sort of arrived at a moment. And it's not just because like MSNBC was spun off into the wilderness. It's not just because like Barry Weiss is having her struggles at CBS news. You can just X Fox, which seems to be doing just fine. You can really feel it. It was reporting recently not on a news network, but on a digital media outlet.

5:08Politico, which just elevated a former television news producer who I'm sure you know Jonathan Greenberger to the top editor role with a mandate to sort of invest more heavily in video. And a few things occurred to me. One is that the distinction between what is a television news outlet and a digital news outlet, that distinction is increasingly I think becoming irrelevant. But it highlights from your broader concern, which is if we accept the premise, as I think you and I both do, that linear television news is in decline, how do these institutions preserve themselves for the future? And what does that look like? And as someone who ran NBC news, I imagine, and particularly like I said, sort of got out of there, like at the end, like the very bitter end of when the going was good,

6:08how do you, what do you think that future actually looks like for whether it's an NBC news, a CBS news, a, an MS now, a CNN, what is the future of these brands? Well, I think to put it plainly, the future is not preservation. It's innovation and evolution. You, as you mentioned, have been chronicling these larger trendlines, the decline of audience for quite some time. I do agree with you that something feels different in the last couple of years. It feels like that inflection point we've all been waiting for has arrived. You alluded to a few of the reasons for that. It's not just the decline of these legacy institutions. It's also, I think, the growth in influence of the upstarts that we've seen, right? That, you know, if you look at the 2024 election and, you know, one of the many

7:14phenomenon that people have reported on that helped fuel Trump was, you know, his support from the so-called manosphere or just the universe of podcasters, voices that turned out to be far more influential than the editorial pages of newspapers or the Sunday morning political show hosts. So it's not just the decline of the old. It's also the new influence of these other platforms. So, you know, if I were tending to one of these legacy brands, which, more swiftly, I'm not anymore, I think my focus would be on what assets do I have under my roof that I can use to meet the moment in a different way? Because I think, you know, the error of broad reach is over. You know, we've seen that on the entertainment side. You know, the finale of MASH famously had a hundred million viewers plus,

8:19you know, the average episode of the Golden Girls was watched by almost 20 million people every Friday night. That error is over. A streaming hit can be a hit with, you know, fewer than five million viewers. Right. And the same is true in news. It's just a fractured landscape. And so trying to aggregate tens of millions of viewers for an evening newscast or for a morning show, it's just a fool's errand and not worth a ton of time and effort. What is worth time and effort is to think about where are the brands under these roofs that still have some residents? And how can they evolve to find audiences in new ways? And I think, you know, you and I have talked before about the role in which individual personalities and more focused niche brands play in this new landscape. And, you know, you and your colleagues at Parker, a perfect example of that. People want to increasingly consume news that has a voice, a clearly identifiable, trusted voice.

9:23They want to consume it in different ways. They want to consume it via podcasts. They want to consume it on social media. And if I were the shepherd of one of these institutions, I would be looking and saying, you know, what do I have that can do that? And I think all of them do, by the way, in some form or another, have valuable assets that could evolve to meet the moment. It's just a matter of focusing time and energy and doing that. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that more dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough? Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your

10:25podcasts. Well, so, and this is what I want to drill down on. Like, first of all, the idea of preservation through innovation is a great one. You look at the assets in your portfolio. I'm reminded of when Jeff Shell was still in the Paramount family when they took over Paramount, and they were looking at CBS news, and they thought we certainly didn't buy this thing for the news division, and we're not thrilled about its performance. But we've got 60 minutes. 60 minutes is like, you know, it's the crown jewel of the Tiffany Network, and it is potentially very valuable, I think, about NBC. And it's like, yeah, maybe the future general generations don't need a 30 minute nightly news report, but people might feel very strong affinity for a Savannah Guthrie or across across the street for a Robin Roberts. How do you, like, the economics of that have to be different in a post-linear landscape. They can't,

11:30they can't, I correct me if I'm wrong, but they can't be nearly as big. And so I guess, what I wonder is like, how do you, if you're like, okay, the asset is 60 minutes, or the asset is the today's show. We want to preserve that in a post-linear landscape, and therefore we, and we need to spend less money on it because the economics have changed, and therefore we do what? Right. So starting first with the one that I'm more familiar with the today's show, what would we try to do when I was there? And what I think the, you know, the terrific leadership that's still there is doing is looking at the today's show, not so much as a broadcast morning show, but looking at as a lifestyle brand. They connect with a certain audience that tends to skew female, that tends to have certain interests in health and wellness and fashion and beauty, yes in politics, yes in parenting, all these different buckets, and saying, how do we build a show

12:32that services that audience, and how do we open up new revenue stream? So you've seen, you know, what I was there, we really built our commerce engine. We invested in the digital product. You've now seen them launching podcasts around their core anchor talent. I think it's a reinvention of what today means, and it's also asking the question to your point about what the economics of that look like. How much of today's success depends on the massive global news gathering infrastructure of NBC news, right? You know, the news portion of that show that relies on that is the first 17 minutes. The rest of it doesn't rely on that. The rest of it relies on contributors who have expertise in all of these different buckets that are relevant to people's everyday lives. The rest of it revolves around the extraordinary relationship that Savannah got three has with that audience. So how much of that huge expensive global infrastructure do you really need for today to

13:34remain relevant and for it to open up new revenue streams? You know, with regard to 60 minutes to your point, 60 minutes is not just the crown jewel of CBS news. It's the preeminent brand when it comes to investigative journalism and long form video reporting. And so thinking about what that means outside of a one hour slot on a Sunday night after NFL games, which by the way is one of the few time slots on broadcast television that is still pretty valuable. Yeah. I think they're enormous opportunities. And I would think that, you know, Barry Weissner team are exploring all of that. But the 60 60 minutes or the idea of a terrific world class investigative journalist like Scott digging into issues for 15 minutes at a time, I think that's going to have resonance forever if done properly. And if they continue to develop people with voices like, you know, like a Scott Pally, like an Anderson Cooper, who the audience connects with, who they trust. And, you know,

14:37whether that continues, whether whether the Sunday night time slot continues to be the most important use case for that. I don't know. But, you know, they have something of extraordinary value there that they can work with. Can you sustain? I guess, I guess the ability to have this preeminent investigative video based journalism is based again on that sort of economic model. The production value of a today's show is fantastic, right? But it just, it requires a lot of money. I guess what I wonder is like, as you think about positioning it for that, is it possible to sustain that? And then like the, it's the second part of that question is, couldn't someone just come along and do the incredible investigative work that a 60 minutes does or create an affinity, like an affinity based talk show for less money and sort of supplant it? Or, or is the brand significant?

15:38And what you're, what you're pinpointing is always the problem in any industry that's disrupted by technological change and these kind of larger, these, these larger challenges is that the, the, the startups tend to be more agile than the legacy players. And there tends to be in large organizations and inability to make these kinds of pivots on time. So are they likely to succeed in doing so? I don't know, but are they, is the opportunity there? If they have the right leadership? Absolutely. There's nothing stopping an upstart from doing those things that you're describing except that the folks that we're talking about have decades of goodwill that they've already built with the audience. So, you know, if, if I hear that Anderson Cooper is launching a new investigative enterprise and he's going to post a 15 minute, you know, piece about some subject of his choosing every month, I'm more inclined to, to both tune in for that, pay for that, engage with that than I am if some random person I've never heard of starts doing that. Similarly, you

16:44know, if I'm seeking, you know, if I'm seeking content about the world, help me understand the geopolitical situation, help me connect with my faith, help me be a better parent and Savannah Guthrie says they're, she's launching a, you know, a product like that. I'm a thousand times more likely to engage in that because I know and trust her and have a relationship with her as a post of some Instagram influencer that I've never heard of. So, I just think that, you know, these individual pieces of talent and some of these brands that still live within these larger organizations, you know, they have enormous, you know, equity with the audience that, that could be leveraged in different and new ways. I want to flip over to the other side of this, which is so like you've got the television news sort of scaling down and then you also have upstarts, but I would even say folks like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or go back to Politico, which is thinking like, oh, we need to be doing more video. As they start to sort of scale

17:45up in that space, how far do you think you can go? I had Meredith Coppet Levine on several months back and asked her like, you know, can you basically, can you, can the New York Times become CNN before CNN becomes the New York Times, which is to say, can you guys start doing really well in video before CNN figures out a digital or subscription strategy? And I guess what I wonder is like, right now the New York Times video, aside from a few projects that they invest really well in, is like basically like vertical video of like Maggie Haberman or Jonathan Swan telling me what they reported yesterday. But do you conceive of institutions like the Times or Politico or whatever, becoming full-fledged video production companies in the way that sort of more mirrors what television news has long been? I see no reason why they can't. And I'm actually, you know,

18:51but that being said, nobody, they haven't yet, which suggests that there is some force internally that's the presents an obstacle. You know, I frame it this way to just be even more specific about it. You know, if instead of a vertical video of print reporters talking about the story, they just reported out, you hired, you know, a Tom Yamis or a Peter Alexander or, you know, a David Muir or some professional broadcaster. Because again, I think it's often overlooked. I mean, it's not neurosurgery, but it is a skill. And people presenting this kind of information in video form is a skill. Not everyone has it. There are different ways to do it that are different styles. It feels some world-fashioned, some more innovative. But I think we both know, the audience seems to know what works. Some things connect better than others. And if an organization like the Times hired a fairly small team of people who knew how to edit video and short packages and somebody who knew how to present and look into camera and read. And they

19:55started doing an evening video recap of the news based on the Times reporting. I see no reason why that couldn't be just as successful as their morning podcast The Daily is, right? I mean, it's just a matter of execution. It's a matter of, it's a matter of whether or not the core Times audience wants that. But I don't know that that's been truly tested yet because I haven't seen them do anything yet that sort of would clear the bar in my mind of being a sort of professional quality piece of broadcast journalism. There's a lot of noise right now around sports betting and a lot of confusion. The reality is legal sports betting is one of the most regulated digital industries in the US. There's strict age and identity verification that keeps miners off the platforms and oversight from over 8,000 regulators across 40 legal states. It's built around

20:56responsible gaming with tools like deposit limits, time limits, and self exclusion easily accessible in app. Compare that to illegal and unregulated operators which still operate at scale with no age verification, no safeguards, no accountability. That difference matters. The sports betting alliance is focused on bringing clarity to this conversation because whether consumers are in a regulated system or outside it has real consequences. Learn more at sports betting alliance.org. You know, you are, you are catalyzing a thought bubble for me that I did not foresee coming, but here it is. I will try and be as distinct as possible. I find that what works in, certainly in the sort of social influencer, whatever we call this, this era we're living in, I should probably have a shorthand for it. We prioritize authenticity and there's a certain informalness that I think really works and what you find and that works by the way from like who you know any guy

22:00like telling you how to fix your washing machine on YouTube to as recline as sort of being more personable, you know, in his video product at the New York Times. One hurdle I find is that there is a there is a sort of muscle memory for people coming out of television or coming out of television that is very formal, that is very official, that is very like me on teleprompter. And there you can sense an awareness and an anxiety around it when you see CNN decide we're going to have Jake Tapper broadcast from his office for an hour like Pat McAfee style. And we're going to dress, we're going to dress, we're going to have Anderson Cooper roll up his shirt sleeves, we're going to get rid of all the screens and we're going to have him look at a physical map on a table like you can sense a sort of paranoia there and a sense of like okay, the world became Joe Rogan and Pat McAfee like how do we do that? Yeah, I wonder what you made. I guess the best way to ask a very big question is to ask a very specific question like what

23:03did you make of CNN doing that? Well, look, I'm a champion of any kind of experimentation and taking shots and swings because I think it's really hard to do, particularly when you're at a big organization like that. So I would never pass negative judgment on somebody sort of saying, let's try this. I think what you point out is very astute and true, which is that you sort of sense a level of discomfort with these new methods of communication. But I think that that Harkins back to what we were just talking about a few minutes ago, which is the fragmented landscape. There are different audiences who want different things. There are also different kinds of journalists and communicators who do their reporting and communicate it in different ways. And there's a match between audiences and communicators. It's smaller groupings than there was when you had Cronkite reading to 50 million people. So we're living an era where some people like the casual style of the daily. And they like to get their news from that podcast in the morning.

24:08Personally, I just, I respect it, love it, et cetera. It's just not how I consume news. Some people prefer to have the news read to them by a polished broadcaster who by the way, another way of saying formal is efficient. Like there's a reason why you write something down. It's because then you don't ramble like I'm rambling during this podcast. You know exactly what you want to say. You know the most important information. And you convey it in, you know, a traditional broadcast news evening, you know, an evening news package is 90 seconds of voiceover and picture capturing yes, incompletely and imperfectly a complicated story about the world. That's an extraordinary and valuable thing to be able to do to communicate that in 90 seconds of well chosen words and pictures. Talking about it in a kind of meandering spitballing fashion for two hours on a podcast is just a different way of exploring the world and explaining it. And there's going to be people who want one and people who want the other and people who are good at one and people who are good at the other. So, you know, to loop back again on your question about the times,

25:10like, you know, can the times do a product like the evening newscast or like sure, but would they want to or should they want to? I don't know. I mean, you know, there's an audience for that that seems to be about 16 million people, right? If you add up the people watching NBC CBS and ABC at 630, it's what? It's roughly 15 to 20 million people at its best moment. They seem well-serviceed by the existing products. Why bother if you're the New York Times trying to get them when most of them are over the age of 70 already? So that could be the better answer to your question about about video products. It's well put. In the spirit of efficiency, our Venn diagram of time overlapped for exactly 20, 25 minutes today. So I am going to let you go, but I'm going to ask you one last question. Every time I talk about the trademarked inexorable decline of television news, I always have to add the caveat that Fox is doing very well. Sure. I always say but Fox, but for Fox. But it's a different thing. I don't think it belongs in the same category because you feel like

26:11it's just hardcore opinion. I think it's a lifestyle brand. It's a way of looking at the world. It's basically saying it's a filter on the world of politics, on global events, and on popular culture, and on social mores. It's an affinity club. It's like some people are members of the NRA who don't even own a gun because they just like the culture of it. They probably never go on hunting, but there's something about it that says FU to the federal government, and I love the outdoors, and whatever number of things that they want to associate with, I think Fox is the same way. They have a view of the world, and news is just kind of the raw material that they use to fuel it. As you think about preservation through innovation, can you carry that over into a post-linear landscape? Absolutely. I think that's what every successful sub-stacker and podcaster is doing. It's saying Sam Harris, who I adore, has a view of the world,

27:18and it encompasses mindfulness and meditation and the nature of consciousness, and also encompasses the politics of the Middle East and what's happening in this country in Washington. He's just in my mind a brilliant thinker, and I just want to hear him talk about what's happening in our world at any given time, and I think that's true of many other podcasters who have loyal audiences who like their particular take on what's happening around them. I think MS now you'll see pursue a similar strategy in terms of continuing to lean into what does Stephanie Rule think about what's happening in the world? What does Joe Scarborough and Mika Briginski think about what's happening in the world? Nicole Wallace, who's one of their most successful anchors, people, she could be on MS now or she could just be the Nicole Wallace brand, and she'd still have an enormous loyal following because she's so smart and thoughtful and has just a terrific way of breaking down things that are going

28:24on in politics. Again, authenticity, figuring out who your specific audience is, it's not going to be everyone, and then figuring out what methods of distribution that they prefer, whether that's audio, video, text, social, or some combination of it. That's the challenge for everybody, and it may be somewhat, it's in some ways easier for upstarts to do it, but I think it's a mistake to think that these legacy brands don't have significant resources that they also can take advantage of. No, no hyperbole here. I get calls from multiple television news talents on a weekly basis asking me like, what should I do? Should I leave? Where's the world going? And I'm sure all of them listening are hanging on your every word. So thank you for this. It would be great to have you back on down the line, and we can talk about this more later, but I'm grateful to you for your wisdom and for your time, and we'll get you back. Pleasure, thanks for having me.

29:27The Grill Room is a presentation of Odyssey in partnership with Puck. I'm Dylan Byers, and I want to thank today's guest Noah Oppenheim. I also want to thank the show's executive producers, Puck co-founder John Kelly, executive editor Ben Landy, and director of editorial operations Gavi Grossman. The show is produced and edited by Molly Nugent, and a special thanks to the team at Odyssey, Kelly Turner, and Bob Tabivos.