Something big is brewing in the new media market.
The Daily Wire announced plans to put their entire podcast suite on Twitter starting May 30, Axios reported on Tuesday.
The Daily Wire, founded by conservative lightning rod Ben Shapiro, is an alternative news source that is quickly on the rise. They broke the 100 million dollar profit mark last year, and their success shows no signs of slowing down.
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The platform has been building their audience by putting their videos on YouTube and hosting many more on their own site. They’ve delved into original, documentary programming as well, something a bit unusual in this emerging, nascent media space. Matt Walsh’s “What is a Woman” garnered praise and enjoyed solid success, and Candace Owens is coming out with a doc called “Convicting a Murderer.”
Now, in this effort to dominate the non-newspaper and cable TV news space, The Daily Wire is officially Twitter sanctioned.
This shows a trend, pointing to the fact that Twitter CEO Elon Musk is aiming for Twitter to branch out and become more than just a social media text space. Tucker Carlson shocked many when he said he’ll be launching his new show on Twitter.
Musk said The Daily Wire is gravitating towards them because Twitter is the last big tech platform that still allows free speech.
Musk aims to sort of be a free speech pioneer. Think back to when YouTube was censoring any videos mentioning Covid in a slightly skeptical light during the height of the pandemic.
What is free today may not be free tomorrow, and Musk gets that.
Pew Research has a poll that says the Americans trust in government is at a historic low of 19%. And just 10% of Americans trust mainstream media.
Musk envisions his platform as the next logical stop for conservative free thinkers. Think of this as Musk’s long-term, multi-decade plan.
Here’s the giant question mark on all this. How the heck do you monetize any of it? Those details have yet to be officially hashed out, but Twitter’s hire last week of former NBC Universal Linda Yaccarino signals a focus on revenue growth.
One idea is the sponsors of the shows will be tweeted out directly, creating more eyeballs, and even separate eyeballs from the ones solely looking at Daily Wire video. Still, its unclear how often people click on those ad links, and if the investment is profitable or not.
But the other options are running out. Matt Walsh said that YouTube demonetized ALL of his videos due to his comments on the Dylan Mulvaney fiasco. He said previously he was making 100k a month on the platform.
YouTube has been consistently shooting itself in the foot. Even a tiny trickle of profit is better than no profit at all, so Twitter has become an island of refuge for many alternative speakers. No, they don’t have the automatic audience for videos specifically that YouTube does. But as YouTube bleeds conservative viewers, Twitter will be there to scoop them up.
While Daily Wire clips will still be shown on YouTube, the full videos and podcasts will appear exclusively on Twitter, or for their paid only subscribers on their actual site.
Best guess? Daily Wire gets a nice chunk of change for exclusivity rights. It doesn’t seem like Musk gets a ton of cash out of the deal, but profit doesn’t seem to be his primary motivating factor. Being a kingmaker and changemaker seems to be his goal. He wants to shape the political and media landscape. And that might not add up to many dollars, but it will more than make up for it in influence.
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