Dan Abrams on End of NewsNation Show, Fractured Media Industry, and How to Cover Trump 2.0
Last Thursday, Dan Abrams announced the end of the nightly show he’s hosted on cable network NewsNation since 2021.
“I simply don’t have the time anymore to do it,” he told Mediaite editor Aidan McLaughlin on this week’s episode of Press Club. “Hosting a cable news show is a lot of work. You don’t just show up and read the teleprompter.”
Abrams, the founder of Mediaite, has a few other things on his plate — he also serves as chief legal analyst for ABC News, host on SiriusXM’s POTUS channel, host of On Patrol: Live, and founder of Law&Crime and fine spirits media company BottleRaiders.
He said he will be stepping down from hosting the NewsNation show in early 2025. He will remain with the network, which he praised for offering “compelling, smart, but politically agnostic news coverage.”
Abrams said he will be focusing on a few other ventures, including the expansion of Mediaite’s YouTube platform and Law & Crime, which has a large YouTube channel and was acquired in a nine-figure deal last year. “I think in 2025, YouTube is going to be the heart of the media industry,” he said.
As a cable news veteran, Abrams weighed in during the wide-ranging interview on the increasingly polarized cable environment. He spoke about the changes the industry has gone through since he started at Court TV, before stops at NBC News and MSNBC, where he worked alongside Rachel Maddow and Tucker Carlson (it was a different time.)
“I was a big fan of Tucker’s. I pushed for him very hard back in the MSNBC days when we were doing initially more balanced coverage. I thought he was incredibly talented, incredibly smart. I still think those things,” Abrams said. “But I think that a lot of what he’s been saying as of late feels like he’s gone off the deep end.”
As for how the industry has changed, Abrams recalled the reception when he first appeared on the Today show, which once boasted a far larger audience of mainstream viewers. “When I started working in TV news we were the center of the universe,” Abrams said. “That stuff used to be a much bigger deal when the media was more centralized. Now it’s more fractured. There are more niche communities rather than these massive audiences coming to a handful of places.”
Meanwhile, the cable news industry in particular has gotten increasingly partisan in those years, Abrams said. Yet those kinds of political incentives are mostly audience-driven. Abrams, who served as general manager of MSNBC after hosting shows on the network, dispelled the idea that on-air talent at networks are told what to say by leadership.
“This myth that the broadcast presidents are sitting there thinking about the politics — they’re thinking about how to get better ratings, and they’re thinking about how not to get in trouble,” he said.
The next four years will present fresh challenges for a beleaguered industry. “The media needs to try to restore credibility,” Abrams said. “I think that there has to be some ability of the media to recognize successes that Trump has… If you want to be seen as a remotely fair broker, you’ve got to give credit where it’s due. And that allows you to then also criticize where it’s warranted.”
As for Trump’s cabinet picks, Abrams described Pam Bondi as “qualified” for attorney general but warning against the selection of Kash Patel to run the FBI. “I’m very concerned about Kash Patel as the head of the FBI,” he said. “In a book he wrote a year ago, he’s talking about an enemies list. How can we have him as the director of the FBI?”
Abrams also spoke about ABC News settling a defamation lawsuit from Trump to the tune of $15 million, the efforts to punish Liz Cheney for her role on the Jan. 6 committee, and how he built Law&Crime from a start-up into a nine-figure media company.
Mediaite’s Press Club airs in full Saturdays at 10 a.m. on Sirius XM’s POTUS Channel 124. You can also subscribe to Press Club on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
