Current:Home > ScamsThe fourth GOP debate will be a key moment for the young NewsNation cable network -MoneyStream
The fourth GOP debate will be a key moment for the young NewsNation cable network
View
Date:2025-04-18 06:37:46
NEW YORK (AP) — By airing the fourth Republican presidential primary debate scheduled for Wednesday — again, minus Donald Trump — the young NewsNation television network will almost certainly reach the largest audience in its history.
Yet with two of the three debate moderators associated with conservative media and not NewsNation, including podcast star Megyn Kelly, the event threatens to be at odds with the centrist image the network is trying to cultivate.
“I think it’s an amazing opportunity and allows us to have more people fully sample the network and see who we are and what we’re doing,” said Cherie Grzech, NewsNation’s senior vice president of news and politics.
Her advice to those who have doubts about how NewsNation can pull it off: Just watch.
A NETWORK STILL SEEKING AN AUDIENCE
The debate is to air from 8 to 10 p.m. ET and will also be shown on the CW network, which like NewsNation is owned by the Nexstar Media Group. The CW will show it live in the eastern half of the country, and tape-delayed out West.
NewsNation took over for the old WGN America network in late 2020 and has tried to establish itself with personalities who made names for themselves elsewhere: Chris Cuomo from CNN, Dan Abrams of ABC News, Ashleigh Banfield from MSNBC and former Fox News host Leland Vittert.
Ratings suggest it’s still looking for an audience — and has a way to go. NewsNation averaged 99,000 viewers in prime time in November, compared to Fox News Channel’s 1.73 million, MSNBC’s 1.14 million, CNN’s 540,000 and Newsmax’s 207,000, the Nielsen company said.
The network bills itself as an unbiased alternative to competitors with more hardened partisan images. Abrams told the Hollywood Reporter that NewsNation’s sweet spot is the “marginalized moderate majority who don’t want hyper-partisan outlets.”
Critics, like the liberal media watchdog Media Matters, suggest NewsNation leans more right than down the middle. A Daily Beast writer who watched the network for a week this fall, Joe Berkowitz, had a similar view, writing that “left-leaning voices are heard on NewsNation rarely, briefly and cursorily — as if to tick a box.”
The network’s ranks include several Fox News alums, including Grzech and Chris Stirewalt, its politics editor. Former Fox executive Bill Shine is a consultant.
Grzech suggested that those critics haven’t watched NewsNation much. “I don’t see that. and it isn’t the experience I’ve had here at all,” she said.
A HIGH-PROFILE DEBATE HEADLINER
In awarding the rights to televise Wednesday’s debate, the Republican National Committee chose the debate moderators. The one with NewsNation ties is Elizabeth Vargas, formerly of ABC News, who hosts an evening newscast on the network. Eliana Johnson of the conservative site Washington Free Beacon was also selected.
The headliner, though, is Kelly. Working with Kelly is a throwback for Grzech; they did debate prep together when both were at Fox. Kelly’s experience working debates during the 2016 Republican presidential nominating process shot her to fame through her feud with Trump.
Kelly signed a big free agent contract with NBC News but that didn’t work out, and she negotiated an exit when her 2018 suggestion that it was OK for white people to wear blackface on Halloween caused a furor.
She’s since remade herself as a podcast and radio star, much more publicly opinionated than before, and is taking a role as a debate moderator that has traditionally been filled by impartial journalists.
It’s not like Kelly hasn’t done it before. But, in her new job, she hasn’t been shy about offering opinions on the people who will be debating.
She’s criticized Ron DeSantis for taking on the Walt Disney Corp. in Florida and said of him during a debate in September on social media, “Seriously, Ron DeSantis, you do not need to smile the whole debate. Whoever told you that misled you.”
Kelly called Nikki Haley’s announcement of her presidential candidacy “cringy.” On X, formerly Twitter, she posted: “Is it just me, or has (Chris) Christie lost a little off his fastball?” She posted “you’ve got to be kidding me” in response to one of Vivek Ramaswamy’s X messages in October.
And during one of the debates on Fox, she posted, “I’m bored.”
“I think there’s an argument to be had about whether she’s a journalist anymore,” said Tom Jones, senior media writer at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank. “My concern if I was NewsNation is that Megyn Kelly is going to come in with her own agenda and turn this debate upside down.”
Jones said he admired how Kelly has remade her career, “but I don’t know if the job she does now necessarily qualifies her to be a moderator for a debate.”
Kelly, through a representative, declined an interview request.
It is a Republican debate, and there’s an argument to be made that figures in the conservative media would be more attuned to what potential GOP primary voters want to hear about. But could that also mean avoiding legitimate topics because they might make a Republican audience uncomfortable? To that end, Grezch said that questions about Trump, the missing debater and leader in the polls, are legitimate.
How NewsNation handles its moment in the spotlight becomes clear Wednesday night.
___
David Bauder writes about media for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder
veryGood! (7)
Related
- US appeals court rejects Nasdaq’s diversity rules for company boards
- South Carolina governor undergoes knee surgery for 2022 tennis injury
- Man charged with killing 3 relatives is returned to Pennsylvania custody
- Tom Felton Reveals Which Scene He Wishes Made It Into Harry Potter
- Trump suggestion that Egypt, Jordan absorb Palestinians from Gaza draws rejections, confusion
- Everything you need to know about how to watch and live stream the 2024 Masters
- Trump Media sues Truth Social founders Andrew Litinsky, Wes Moss for 'reckless' decisions
- Tiger Woods' ankle has 'zero mobility,' Notah Begay says before the Masters
- Meet first time Grammy nominee Charley Crockett
- The Global Mining Boom Puts African Great Apes at Greater Risk Than Previously Known
Ranking
- Sonya Massey's father decries possible release of former deputy charged with her death
- Lawyer for sex abuse victims says warning others about chaplain didn’t violate secrecy order
- Armed teen with mental health issues shot to death by sheriff’s deputies in Southern California
- Border Patrol must care for migrant children who wait in camps for processing, a judge says
- Nearly 400 USAID contract employees laid off in wake of Trump's 'stop work' order
- Millions still under tornado watches as severe storms batter Midwest, Southeast
- Mike Tyson says he's scared to death of upcoming Jake Paul fight
- 'Coordinated Lunar Time': NASA asked to give the moon its own time zone
Recommendation
Louvre will undergo expansion and restoration project, Macron says
Foul play suspected in disappearance of two women driving to pick up kids in Oklahoma
This fungus turns cicadas into 'zombies' after being sexually transmitted
Andy Cohen regrets role in Princess Kate conspiracy theories: 'Wish I had kept my mouth shut'
South Korea's acting president moves to reassure allies, calm markets after Yoon impeachment
Transportation officials want NYC Marathon organizers to pay $750K to cross the Verrazzano bridge
Caitlin Clark of Iowa is the AP Player of the Year in women’s hoops for the 2nd straight season
Why Rebel Wilson Thinks Adele Hates Her