How will cable networks thrive without President Trump in the White House?

Los Angeles Times

"It’s never pretty for a hit TV show when it loses its biggest star," says Stephen Battaglio. "Cable news networks are about to learn what it feels like when President Trump leaves the White House on Jan. 20 to make way for former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump has fueled a five-year run of record ratings and profit for Fox News, MSNBC and CNN that began when Trump first descended the escalators of his eponymous midtown Manhattan tower in June 2015 to announce his candidacy for president. While the rest of the traditional TV business has spiraled downward as consumers have shifted away from pay TV subscriptions and consumed a bounty of streaming video services, cable news has thrived during the Trump administration. Viewing levels reached an all-time high in October. Despite Trump’s false allegations of voting fraud and legal challenges in the closely contested states he lost to Biden, the daily narrative is about to shift. When Trump departs the White House in January, so does the daily cacophony and outrage that provided a firehose-like stream of content for cable outlets and the nation of news junkies who watched. Now, news executives and producers are pondering whether audiences will remain as politically engaged, or if they will once again be dependent on natural disasters, celebrity deaths and true crime sagas to draw viewers as they did in the days before Trump."

ALSO:

• Trump isn't going to fade away after Jan. 20, so TV news might still cover him: The inevitable ratings dip of a Biden presidency might tempt TV news to continue focusing on everything Trump does and/or tweets. "Is the media going to ignore him when he's firing spitballs every day?" asked Jim VandeHei, CEO and co-founder of Axios. "You're not going to have the theatrics; you're not going to have the tweeting, and the media's going to have to somehow return to normal in an environment where half the country literally kind of hates the work we do."
• Could Rupert Murdoch give Trump a contributor gig or his own show?: “Rupert is going to make a humongous offer,” a source tells Vanity Fair. “The thinking is, Let’s buy Trump off so he shuts the f*ck up.”
• Fox News is ready to use its "Obama playbook" to attack the Biden presidency