For the last several years, media companies have been under fire for being wildly unprofitable. Major press companies beefed up their staff during the first Trump administration. Donald Trump was a ratings bonanza in his first term. But ever since 2020, there's been a total implosion in both trust in the press and its profitability. It's about to get worse—they can't beg Donald Trump to save them this time.

At the top of the list, MSNBC, along with several other cable channels, faces an uncertain future. Its parent company, Comcast, is spinning off MSNBC, CNBC, and several other outlets into a standalone company. The move is a tax write-off for Comcast because they've become such losers for the bottom line.

In October, CNBC reported, "NBCUniversal's cable networks aren't growing anymore. The company's energy and focus is on promoting Peacock, NBCUniversal's growing but still money-losing streaming service. Carving out the cable portfolio could placate Comcast investors by removing declining assets from the balance sheet."

Whether or not these networks can survive on their own is an open question. But they aren't alone. After the loud uproar at the Washington Post when upper management refused to endorse anyone in this Presidential race, New York Magazine reports that Jeff Bezos is looking at cracking down on the newspaper giant. Runaway costs, shrinking subscribers, and decreasing relevance are creating issues. The paper was projected to lose $77 million this year, and that was before an estimated 250,000 people canceled their subscriptions.

CNN has cost-cutting on the chopping block, too. Former Fox News star Chris Wallace did not have his contract renewed at CNN. And numerous other network stars and talent are reportedly on the chopping block. CNN experienced the Trump bump like everyone else, but there's no sign they're getting the same thing this time.

The Associated Press is included in the cost cuts. They're trying to reduce their workforce by 8% in the upcoming months. Broader industry outlooks see more layoffs on the horizon.

The irony is that Donald Trump is coming back to the White House. But something has changed in 2024 - the radical progressive wing of the Democratic Party isn't staying glued to their television sets. As Michael Schaeffer writes in Politico, "The Resistance Is Not Coming to Save You. It's Tuning Out."

He notes that The Drudge Report, which lived off of both pro- and anti-Trump sentiment, is veering sharply away from covering Trump. Schaeffer notes, "The site knows the audience well, meaning its post-election programming choices are also a good indication of where the emotional energy of anti-Trump America is headed: Instead of tuning in, the audiences that fueled the post-2016 resistance are checking out."

There's no Trump bump on the horizon, even as he's starting to dominate the airwaves again with cabinet selections. Book publishers are keeping their anti-Trump powered dry, too. One D.C. literary agent told Politico, "I talked to a dozen editors last week to check in with them and to see what they were planning to do for political books in a Trump era. They were all exhausted at the thought of doing more anti-Trump books … No one has the energy to go through another four years of publishing this stuff even though the first four years were very good for publishers."

You can see this in used bookstores, too. I've walked in a few, and they are awash in anti-Trump jeremiads as the hard-left chucks everything from their shelves. Donald Trump was a ratings bonanza in his first term, but the Trump bump hasn't materialized this time.

Villa Vie Residences probably has a better read on the moment among liberals when they started offering "Skip Forward"cruise packages. Despondent Democrats can hop on the cruise ship for four years in an attempt to drown their sorrows in the non-stop drinks, buffets, and offerings of the cruise line. Tickets for these cruise lines are in the six-figure range.

The best metaphor for what's happening is the new hope among the progressive set. They're trying to make Blue Sky a viable platform. The alternative to Elon Musk's X/Twitter, lefties have flocked there in droves seeking safe spaces. The right-leaning satire site, The Babylon Bee, tried to post some joke articles on Blue Sky, and liberals reported and took down those pieces for various forms of "hate speech." Even some liberals are getting kicked off the platform because they're not radical enough. It's a Marxist struggle session wrapped in a steel bubble of liberal echo chambers.

That's the most devastating part of this for the news media. They're not only not getting a Trump bump but also an anti-Trump bump this time. Liberals are tuning out and running away from reality. They don't want to read or see news that challenges them. They're running away. 

That only leaves one set of news consumers in the Trump era: conservatives. They already hate the media and have no inclination to save the press. It's been a rough few years for the press, but with the election of Donald Trump, all signs point to things getting worse for the press.