Glenn Beck Rallies Troops For Revolution Against TV
The transformation is also evident in the economics of the business. On Fox News, Mr. Beck averaged 2.2 million daily viewers and was paid $2.5 million a year. GBTV, which jumped on the scene in September, is expected to bring in at least $40 million in revenue this year, supported by advertising and more than 300,000 subscribers paying as much as $9.95 a month for full access to GBTV, according to a person close to the company. While it is significantly smaller than his audience at Fox News, it’s still more than an established network like CNBC, which drew an average of 189,000 viewers over the course of the total day in February, according to Nielsen.
Boldfaced emphasis added by me.
I can’t decide if this is revolutionary or delusional.
The thing is, let’s say everyone else like Beck jumps from TV to the Net. And each one wants $9.95 per month for access.
That will quickly add up to much more than what people were paying for cable when those people were simply included in the mix.
And you know what a troublemaker I am. I wonder how many more subscribers he’d get if he was charging just one dollar per month.
I don’t know the mechanics of watching his GBTV (I have no interest in it other than as an academic exercise here). Can it be viewed on an iPad? Then why charge $9.95 if $1.00 will get more people? It seems to me that making $40M a year is better when you can say you have forty million viewers instead of only three-hundred thousand.
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