Why Does The Mainstream Media Hate Joe Rogan?
Spoiler: Technology has made their business model obsolete.
With 11 million viewers on average per episode Joe Rogan is one of the most influential personalities in the world. The below chart gives an indication of audience numbers per episode.
What’s Going On?
Technology has killed the traditional media’s stranglehold on communicating with the population. For decades our news was dominated by a handful of companies who gave us our opinions on the topics of the day. We were given two choices politically (left or right) and the political battlegrounds have typically been over cultural issues (nothing that ever threatens the flow of money).
With the birth of the internet the business model changed. Media companies found themselves competing with individual reporters on platforms like YouTube. When we say ‘competing’ we mean losing viewers, attention and power to Internet personalities.
In a desperate (and predictable) attempt to stay relevant the mainstream media are attacking Joe Rogan and trying to get him cancelled. If they can destroy him they hope to retain their power and money. It won’t work but they will try anyway.
The Toxic Relationship With Advertisers
When I worked for a big company I witnessed a breakdown in relationship between the company and a newspaper. The company decided to stop buying ads in the paper (cut the money stream) and the very next day that paper started publishing hit pieces against the company. Irrespective of whether the attacks were justified (I did not think they were) the event highlighted the blood sucking relationship between these organisations:
Companies pay newspapers for good coverage
Newspapers are paid by companies to not attack them
The traditional media is stuck in a parasitic dance with its advertisers/sponsors. The media needs the advertisers money to survive and will publish whatever they need to in order to protect their income stream. Meanwhile the advertisers are stuck in a toxic relationship with a dying industry that has the power to hurt them if they don’t keep paying. Hardly surprising that only 29% of Americans (36% of Brits) trust the traditional media.
It could be worse. The media could be owned by the government…
Where Does This End
Rogan has been getting into trouble for years. The problem is he is willing to talk to people that are deeply unpopular with the establishment for expressing ‘dangerous opinions’:
Dr Robert Malone. Dangerous opinions on Covid
Dr Peter McCullough. Dangerous opinions on Covid
Dr Jordan Peterson. Dangeorus opinions on gender and climate change
Alex Jones. Dangerous opinions on government, aliens and frogs
Abigail Shrier. Dangerous opinions on trans children
Call us non-conformists but we LOVE to hear dangerous ideas and read forbidden secrets. If there are experts on the TV telling us not to listen to someone because they are dangerous, we get super curious (can’t help it) and we will ferret out the people that are willing to talk about it, even if they get cancelled.
At The Wealth Gap we don’t think Rogan is the problem. He is just guy having 3-4 hour conversations with a variety of interesting people who aren’t always given the time by the traditional media. The problem is times and technology are changing. The media Barons of the past are no more and out of the withered husk of what was once a mighty media empire has sprung thousands of independent talking heads with no entangled financial arrangements, all vying for attention and a piece of the pie. Rogan may be the biggest and most influential
Until Next Time
The Wealth Gap