The NY Post is run by Rupert Murdoch to further his conservative agenda. It loses $50 million a year. The Washington Times is run by Rev. Sun Myung Moon to further his conservative agenda. By some estimates Rev. Moon has sunk $2 to $3 billion into it and it has never been profitable. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is run by Richard Mellon Scaife to further his conservative agenda. It loses $20 to $30 million a year.
The Weekly Standard used to be owned by Murdoch to further his conservative agenda but is now owned by Philip Anschutz to further his conservative agenda. Either way, it loses $5 million a year.
Do you know how many people read The Weekly Standard? They have a circulation of 80,000. To put it bluntly, that's pathetic. That means almost no one reads it. Its main purpose is not to turn a profit but to spread Republican propaganda in the guise of news. Conservative billionaires use these publications to give legitimacy to their political opinions, but don't actually expect to make any money for them. They're an investment, in propaganda. But without their wealthy benefactors, these publications would immediately go bankrupt and cease to exist.
On the other hand, progressive media has now built a self-sustaining business model on the web that makes money because people actually read the websites or watch the shows. I can't speak for other progressive outlets (Huffington Post for one seems to have a very healthy valuation). But I can speak for us. The Young Turks is a progressive web show that is popular and profitable all on its own. The Young Turks now has numbers that make conservative outlets look like a joke by comparison.
In fact, today the show crossed the 100 million views barrier on YouTube. The Young Turks now has 100,106,994 views on our You Tube channel alone. This doesn't count views on our own website and the dozens of other outlets we're on, including Sirius XM Radio. Last month we had 7,289,549 views on our YouTube channel. Now think about The Weekly Standard's sad, little 80,000 number (and how many of those people actually read the magazine?). And these clowns lose $5 million a year to run that operation. Spending over $5 million a year to reach 80,000 people? That amuses me.
Let me give you one last stat. The Young Turks is now averaging over 350,000 views a day on You Tube. That is more than four times The Weekly Standard's circulation. And we get that in just one day! And we do all of this at just a fraction of what they spend. How can they possibly compete with us in the long term?
The bottom line is that most of these conservative media outlets don't stand a chance. Sure, some will have staying power in representing a certain percentage of the population. Those are the ones that focus on opinions. But no one is taking their "news" operations seriously. On the other hand, a progressive colossus is rising on the web and the conservatives are powerless to stop it. That is not a future that bodes well for the Republican Party or the conservative movement in this country. We're coming for them. They're standing in front of a steamroller and they don't even know it.