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Scott MacFarlane has traded in the desk once sat behind at CBS News on Election Night for something more direct — livestreamed midterms coverage for the progressive outlet MeidasTouch.
He won’t havesomeone manipulating
a Magic Wall or Big Board. He won’t be introduced by swelling orchestral music. And he won’t be competing with colleagues for precious minutes of airtime. MacFarlane will be ready to talk to followers via streaming channels starting at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
At a traditional TV outlet, says MacFarlane, his contribution would have been curated by producers. This year, he says, “the voice we get to use is my voice. I am going unscripted, without a teleprompter, just telling people point blank what’s happening.”
Dozens of independent journalists will do the same.
Coverage of returns on Election Night has long been dominated by the nation’s big TV-news outlets. This year, however, so-called “creators” — indie journalists and non-traditional experts — want their own piece of the audience.
In addition to the MeidasTouch stream, which will feature MacFarlane along with former MSNBC host Katie Phang, former NBC News political guru Chuck Todd will hold forth with colleague Chris Cillizza in a live stream they call “The Projection.” It will appear across YouTube, X, Substack, Decision Desk HQ’s Votes portal and Noosphere, one of many new subscription platforms that offers access to the work of expert journalists. Piers Morgan, whose Uncensored company won millions in funding late last year, is traveling from London to host several nights of coverage in the nation’s capital. Jim Acosta and Katie Couric, two popular former mainstream TV anchors, will team up to host a live stream from the University of Virginia, and have booked guests including Rahm Emanuel, Pete Buttigieg and Tara Setmayer. Don Lemon, the former CNN anchor, will greet guests such as Joy Reid and Hunter Biden while presiding over a show in a New York City bar. Even staid CSPAN is getting in on the craze, and plans to simulcast hours of coverage from progressive outlet The Young Turks and conservative commentator Patrick Bet-David.
Despite some of the hosts’ mainstream roots, many of them think they can bring viewers something the legacy outlets cannot.
“This will be Murdoch-Ellison-free coverage,” says Acosta of the show he and Couric plan to put on, making a direct nod to the ownership of Fox News by the Murdoch family and the control over CBS News and CNN now enjoyed by the Ellison family, which controls the newly formed Skydance. “Katie and I are free to let it rip.”
The ability to speak frankly and with little corporate oversight isn’t the main reason pundits and independents are gathering. Many of these people see a big opportunity to generate subscriptions, advertising and revenue — and to draw bigger audiences to their various outlets in an era when the economics of media are decidedly in flux.
“I think this is a precursor to what we are going to see in two years, with more audiences coming to platforms like ours, along with more top-tier guests, and more newsmakers,” says Rashida Jones, who was named CEO of Morgan’s company in May after a stint running MSNBC. Advertisers were eager to sponsor Morgan’s shows from Washington, D.C., she says. A good Election Night showing by Morgan, she says, can only generate new audiences and business.
Will there be enough of both to help all these companies thrive? About 58% of U.S. adults see social media as a key means of staying current with the news cycle, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. Approximately 13% indicated social media was the most important way to get news. When Pew issued a similar survey in 2022, 43% of Americans said social media was an important way they got news, and 5% said it was the most important.
“The crowd’s going to keep on growing,” says Jones. “This is the turning of the corner of that audience coming to digital-first platforms.”
The independents aren’t the only ones who see a growing opportunity. Mainstream media is also seeding the ground. Fox Nation, the Fox News streaming outlet, will run a three-hour live special led by the team behind the popular Ruthless podcast. Josh Holmes, one of the co-hosts, says he will likely not drink alcohol even though the event will take place in front of a crowd in a Washington D.C. bar.
“We will try to keep a sense of humor about topics that people often get sort of negative about, and then we always provide what we think is an under-the-hood look at serious topics,” says Holmes. The team doesn’t see the livestream as competing with Fox News coverage led by Bret Baier, Martha MacCallum and Bill Hemmer, says Holmes. “Wwe are supplementing that, trying to give some perspective.” Several “Ruthless” members have jobs as strategic political advisers and can offer unique insights.
NBC News this year is launching its first vertical-video program, led by anchor and correspondent Gadi Schwartz. He will be on the ground in Texas and will talk with various NBC News journalists based in different parts of the country. The program will “really look at a more conversational approach to how the night is unfolding,” says Catherine Kim, NBC News’ executive vice president of editorial, and will play out not only on the company’s social media feeds, but also Schwartz’ own.
Independents who once had a strong foothold in legacy media may have the best chance of surviving. Couric and Acosta booked their own guests and are taking a strong hand in designing the look and feel of their Election Night program.
“We both worked for a long time with legacy media, and I think it made the transition to a digital platform much easier for us, because we came in with a built-in audience to a certain extent,” says Couric. “We want to have both of our audiences intersect and come together on Election Night, and it will be hopefully good for both of us.”’
The duo say they know which elements of news presentation to keep and which to jettison. Delivering important information is in. Doing it in an overly formal way is not.
“We want to make it unlike what the networks are doing,” says Acosta. “We are not going to be overly stilted and scripted and all of that stuff. This is much more freewheeling.”
And, potentially, blunt. Couric says she can say things that NBC and CBS would never have allowed her to state when she worked for them on programs like “Today” and the “CBS Evening News.”
“I think we are liberated,” says Couric. “I don’t think our hands are tied in the way that network anchors are with their corporate overlords breathing down their necks.”
And since the program will be done on their own terms, Couric and Acosta can also relax — well, at least a little bit. “We are going to be much more casually dressed than I was when I did election coverage for CBS,” says Couric. “There might be an open bar,” says Acosta.
