Trump bump 2.0 may not pack the same punch for media stocks

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free

Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world

Donald Trump does not have much love for the mainstream media. Yet his first term as president was a boon for the industry. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal all saw an influx of new subscribers. Likewise, the country’s three major cable news networks — Fox News Channel, MSNBC and CNN — enjoyed a big boost in viewership.

The Trump bump was the most pronounced at the NYT. The number of paid subscriptions across its digital and print products more than doubled from 2.9mn to 7.5mn between 2016 to 2020. Shares in the company nearly quadrupled during the period. 

Could a second Trump presidency trigger another surge in subscribers and page views? The market seems to think so. Shares in NYT hit a new high last week after climbing 18 per cent this year. But investors may be getting ahead of themselves.

Back in 2016, Trump was an unknown quantity and his victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016 was a shock. The mass outrage over his policies and the chaotic turnover in his administration kept eyeballs glued to cable news and produced subscription growth throughout those four years. This time around, the country knows what it is in for. Interest in the never-ending flow of Trump stories could be hard to sustain as fatigue and apathy take over.

More fundamentally, the media landscape has also changed drastically over the past eight years. Traditional sources of information — television and newspaper — have seen their influence steadily chipped away by TikToks and Instagrams. The share of Americans who prefer to get their news from social media and podcasts have both increased over the past four years (by 6 percentage points to 18 per cent and two percentage points to 5 per cent respectively), while the percentage of those who prefer news websites has fallen, according to the Pew Research Center.

The shift has been particularly pronounced among young people. Forty-three per cent of those who are aged 18-29 prefer to get their news from social media. In the world of podcasts, controversial Ultimate Fighting Championship commentator and comedian Joe Rogan’s show is the most popular on Spotify, with more than 15mn followers.

This fragmentation in consumption comes as traditional media conglomerates like Comcast, which owns MSNBC, and Warner Bros Discovery, which owns CNN, struggle under the weight of their heavy debt loads, a slump in ad dollars and cord-cutting by consumers shifting to streaming. One thing that media companies could count on would be a lighter regulatory regime under Trump. The prospect of defensive sector consolidation is a better reason to buy into media stocks than banking on another Trump bump.

[email protected]