Trump TV: Revenge of Investment

By Steve Safran 

Are you ready for 24/7 Trump?

We’re looking this week at how that might happen. We’re not predicting if Trump will launch a channel or if it would be successful. There’s no shortage of that commentary online. Rather, we’re looking at what a Trump network might look like.

Previously, I wrote about the feasibility of Trump TV. Now we’re going to look at how it could actually play out.

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The costs involved in launching a traditional, cable-first channel are very high, and the channel would have difficulty finding controversy-averse advertisers. Vanity networks like Oprah Winfrey’s OWN even struggle, and she is beloved. Instead, Trump could take a modern approach and get on TV—fast and cheap.

Forget Cable

The fastest, cheapest and most cost-effective route is to launch an online channel. Forget about cable. Trump TV should be online and available as an app and on digital devices like Apple TV, Roku and Amazon Fire TV. You would visit the channel the way you see Netflix; there would be choices of video stories to choose from and you watch the ones you want.

The channel could start with one hour live per day. Suppose Trump wants to be live at 9 p.m. weeknights. He doesn’t need a big staff. A small virtual studio would do—all green screen with the set placed in digitally. He clearly doesn’t want writers. “Trump Tonight” could be his pulpit.

From there, you only need a small staff and a few freelancers. You get one-man-band reporters to put together stories each day for the TV apps. The computer site itself can be a blog-like, “river of news,” which fits Trump’s stream-of-consciousness style. He can hop on, blog, and hop off.

With the stories online, consider this: Trump would very likely have his message picked up and run by the large cable news channels. He knows how to work the system. He knows what to say so that news channels will give him coverage. He can provide TV-ready commentary that other media outlets have shown themselves eager to broadcast.

Donald Trump is not going away.

Revenge of Investment

Where’s the money? Alas, we’re not writing the business model. There are two questions to answer:

1. Does this really need to make money?

2. Is Trump willing to spend a few million each year for his vanity channel?

This is unlikely to succeed as a subscription channel. People pay $9.99 a month for the entire Netflix catalogue. Would they pay that just for Trump? People are used to free content online.

We know Donald doesn’t like to spend his own money. His m.o. is borrowing money, paying it back with profits or going bankrupt and defaulting. But this is personal. He is thinking legacy. He has scores to settle. So does Peter Theil, who donated more than a million dollars to the Trump campaign, and who backed the infamous Hulk Hogan lawsuit that brought down Gawker Media. This could be a drop in the bucket for them and any other wealthy friends who want to join in.

Stop thinking about ROI as “Return on Investment” and think about it as “Revenge of Investment.” Peter Theil got his revenge. Trump can get his—nightly.

The Audience is There – For Now

Ultimately, Trump will have to decide how much he is willing to spend to have an outlet for his message. There is an audience—at the moment. But audiences are fickle. Turning an audience into a vanity channel has yet to work well financially. But everyone who has written about Trump this past year has learned this much: Don’t predict failure.

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