Business
Why TV News Anchors Like Joy Reid and Don Lemon Are Moving to Substack
Should Jim Acosta wear a tie?
For the last two months, since the former anchor quit his job at CNN, Mr. Acosta has been broadcasting online several times per week, usually from his dining room, using his iPhone. Often, he is troubleshooting in real time, far from the high-gloss desk and sophisticated cameras of his CNN set.
One question he faces is how many “frills” to add to his interviews with the likes of Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary, or Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top House Democrat.
“The magic here is not killing or messing with this organic nature of the show,” said Matt Hoye, Mr. Acosta’s newly hired executive producer and a 30-year veteran of CNN, who is leaning “no” on adding neckties but “yes” on graphics.
“The Jim Acosta Show” streams live on Substack, a platform that has recently cemented itself as a harbor for stranded television anchors.
In January, the start-up best known for email newsletters gave all users the ability to publish live video. Now it is home to a handful of cable stars marooned from their mainstream media jobs amid reshuffled lineups, salary cuts and other controversies. On Substack, where politics is the most popular and lucrative category, anti-Trump publishers have been performing particularly well.
Joy Reid began regularly posting to Substack in March, after her MSNBC show was canceled. On Friday, the former CNN anchor Don Lemon joined Substack after a year of livestreaming on YouTube. They join established chart-toppers, like Mehdi Hasan (the former MSNBC host) and Dan Rather (the onetime face of CBS News), along with various CNN expatriates: Norm Eisen, Jessica Yellin, Chris Cillizza, Elise Labott and Alisyn Camerota.
This new TV diaspora has one central proposition: The future of news is casual. Sometimes very casual. Anchors can lose their seats and still hold on to their star power, so long as they give modern audiences what they want. “What’s most important in my business now is authenticity,” as Fox News host-turned-YouTube star Megyn Kelly recently told The New York Times.
“Jim Acosta’s people do not really care if Jim Acosta is wearing pancake makeup or not,” said Molly Jong-Fast, who is both an MSNBC political analyst and a regular guest on Substack shows.
Last Wednesday, Mr. Acosta ended his 30-minute interview with Representative Jeffries by talking about college basketball. Then a small orange ball materialized in the host’s hand, delivered by his fetch-hungry beagle, Duke. His visible houseplants had been previously mocked on Fox News, to which Mr. Acosta soberly objected.
Last month, on his birthday weekend, Don Lemon used his YouTube channel to stream himself having breakfast and lunch — both lasted nearly an hour — and a party, during which he sang parts of Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” into a karaoke microphone.
“People don’t really care if they’re in a coat and tie on the north lawn of the White House or in an air-conditioned studio in 30 Rock,” said Jeff Zucker, former president of CNN and former boss to several of these now-independent journalists. “They just want to hang out and hear from someone they like and trust.”
Katie Couric, who started an independent media company in 2017, has found the accelerated decline of linear television “at times upsetting,” she said: “I used to anchor the ‘CBS Evening News’ and ‘The Today Show,’ and I’m doing Instagram Lives now.”
Today, however, with a few dozen employees and a newsletter nearing one million subscribers, she more often feels legacy media is “late to the party.” Broadcasting on social media is “authenticity on steroids,” said Ms. Couric, who recently paused shopping for an Oscar’s party dress to livestream a breaking-news discussion on Ukraine, parking herself on the couch of a fashion brand’s showroom, wearing no makeup, she pointed out.
Mr. Lemon, who was ousted by CNN in 2023, a few months after making remarks about Nikki Haley’s age that were widely viewed as sexist, said he was courted almost immediately by Substack. Instead he agreed in 2024 to bring a new show to X with Elon Musk as his first interview guest.
That interview grew tense, and when Mr. Musk subsequently canceled their $1.5 million deal, Mr. Lemon filed a lawsuit that is ongoing. (“It’s crazy that I am in litigation with the richest man in the world,” Mr. Lemon said, though he claimed to not think about it very often.)
In the meantime, Mr. Lemon grew his YouTube channel to more than 656,000 subscribers, uploading his own takes, “Lemon drops,” alongside interviews with the conservative podcaster Candace Owens and Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat from Texas.
“At first, you’re frightened, like, ‘Oh no, I’m not on the big broadcast anymore,’” said Mr. Lemon, who initially recorded his YouTube videos from a pricey, professionally lit studio — “cable news lite,” he said — until he realized that the chatty bonus videos he filmed in his living room, with his barking dogs, were more positively received by subscribers.
“You don’t need all those things that you think you need,” he said.
In December, Mr. Lemon added a paid membership option to his YouTube channel, with options ranging from about $3 to $50 a month. A representative declined to disclose his membership numbers. But Mr. Lemon said the show is profitable, primarily through YouTube’s advertising revenue share. He also earns income through social media sponsorships and corporate speaking engagements that he said he wasn’t able to accept while working for CNN.
Ms. Reid, who lost her MSNBC slot about a month ago, is still experiencing the “strange disconnect” of life without a television schedule and team of producers, she said.
She is “just tired,” she said, and working through her next steps, Ms. Reid said in an interview: “What do I want to do? What am I good at? What can I do to contribute to the world?” For now, she has landed on writing about democracy to an audience of about 118,000.
Mr. Acosta, whose subscribers surged after he encouraged CNN viewers in his sign-off message to not “bow down to a tyrant,” now ranks among Substack’s top 20 publishers in politics. Catherine Valentine, who recruits and wrangles these political and television personalities for Substack now calls this the “Jim Acosta model.”
Among his 287,000 total readers, Mr. Acosta has more than 10,000 paid subscribers, though he too declined to provide any specific financial figures. When asked in early March if he was approaching the $1 million mark in annualized revenue, Mr. Acosta laughed: “Are you writing a story, like, look at all these greedy broadcast journalists cashing in?” (He also answered: “I’m getting there.”)
Mr. Acosta has also been exploring additional content partnerships, like a podcasting deal, to augment his Substack presence. But he still speaks about Substack with the reverence of a former college radio host experimenting with “garage rock” — or at least a “model submarine enthusiast,” he said.
“It feels like I’ve stumbled upon this really cool hobby that I wish I’d known about sooner, but I didn’t,” Mr. Acosta said. “And I don’t know if CNN would have allowed me to have a presence.” (One current CNN anchor, Jake Tapper, does use Substack, but more as a social media feed, reposting CNN clips.)
Some networks have tried to incorporate more of internet’s casual and chaotic offerings into their sleek lineups, as when ESPN acquired the freewheeling “Pat McAfee Show” or Fox News developed a show with “a signature podcast style” around Will Cain.
But many still place restrictions on their employees’ presence on platforms such as Substack, said Marc Paskin, a talent agent who represents journalists as co-head of news and broadcasting at United Talent Agency, where Mr. Lemon is a client.
“There has always been a fear of cannibalization of an audience,” Mr. Paskin said. “The truth of matter is that these things should be viewed as partners.”
Until 2026, Mr. Lemon still has a contract in place with CNN that limits his broadcasting opportunities with competitors. Will he return to television then? Maybe if someone made him a “great offer,” he said. But maybe not.
“The longer I do this, the more satisfying it becomes, the more profitable it becomes and I start loving it more,” he said. “I think the folks who are in legacy media now are going to have to figure out what we’re doing over here.”
The sale of Warner Bros. — whether in pieces to Netflix or in its entirety to Paramount — is stirring mounting worries among Hollywood union leaders about the possible fallout for their members.
Unions representing writers, directors, actors and crew workers have voiced growing concerns that further consolidation in the media industry will reduce competition, potentially causing studios to pay less for content, and make it more difficult for people to find work.
“We’ve seen this movie before, and we know how it ends,” said Michele Mulroney, president of the Writers Guild of America West. “There are lots of promises made that one plus one is going to equal three. But it’s very hard to envision how two behemoths, for example, Warner Bros. and Netflix … can keep up the level of output they currently have.”
Last week, Netflix announced it agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s film and TV studio, Burbank lot, HBO and HBO Max for $27.75 a share, or $72 billion. It also agreed to take on more than $10 billion of Warner Bros.’ debt. But Paramount, whose previous offers were rebuffed by Warner Bros., has appealed directly to shareholders with an alternative bid to buy all of the company for about $78 billion.
Paramount said it will have more than $6 billion in cuts over three years, while also saying the combined companies will release at least 30 movies a year. Netflix said it expects its deal will have $2 billion to $3 billion in cost cuts.
Those cuts are expected to trigger thousands of layoffs across Hollywood, which has already been squeezed by the flight of production overseas and a contraction in the once booming TV business.
Mulroney said that employment for WGA writers in episodic television is down as much as 40% when comparing the 2023-2024 writing season to 2022-2023.
Executives from both companies have said their deals would benefit creative talent and consumers.
But Hollywood union leaders are skeptical.
“We can hear the generalizations all day long, but it doesn’t really mean anything unless it’s on paper, and we just don’t know if these companies are even prepared to make promises in writing,” said Lindsay Dougherty, Teamsters at-large vice president and principal officer for Local 399, which represents drivers, location managers and casting directors.
Dougherty said the Teamsters have been engaged with both Netflix and Paramount, seeking commitments to keep filming in Los Angeles.
“We have a lot of members that are struggling to find work, or haven’t really worked in the last year or so,” Dougherty said.
Mulroney said her union has concerns about both bids, either by Netflix or Paramount.
“We don’t think the merger is inevitable,” Mulroney said. “We think there’s an opportunity to push back here.”
If Netflix were to buy Warner Bros.’ TV and film businesses, Mulroney said that could further undermine the theatrical business.
“It’s hard to imagine them fully embracing theatrical exhibition,” Mulroney said. “The exhibition business has been struggling to get back on its feet ever since the pandemic, so a move like this could really be existential.”
But the Writers Guild also has issues with Paramount’s bid, Mulroney said, noting that it would put Paramount-owned CBS News and CNN under the same parent company.
“We have censorship concerns,” Mulroney said. “We saw issues around [Stephen] Colbert and [Jimmy] Kimmel. We’re concerned about what the news would look like under single ownership here.”
That question was made more salient this week after President Trump, who has for years harshly criticized CNN’s hosts and news coverage, said he believes CNN should be sold.
The worries come as some unions’ major studio contracts, including the DGA, WGA and performers guild SAG-AFTRA, are set to expire next year. Two years ago, writers and actors went on a prolonged strike to push for more AI protections and better wages and benefits.
The Directors Guild of America and performers union SAG-AFTRA have voiced similar objections to the pending media consolidation.
“A deal that is in the interest of SAG-AFTRA members and all other workers in the entertainment industry must result in more creation and more production, not less,” the union said.
SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said the union has been in discussions with both Paramount and Netflix.
“It is as yet unclear what path forward is going to best protect the legacy that Warner Brothers presents, and that’s something that we’re very actively investigating right now,” he said.
It’s not clear, however, how much influence the unions will have in the outcome.
“They just don’t have a seat at the ultimate decision making table,” said David Smith, a professor of economics at the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School. “I expect their primary involvement could be through creating more awareness of potential challenges with a merger and potentially more regulatory scrutiny … I think that’s what they’re attempting to do.”
Businessman Brian Kahn has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud in a case that brought down a hedge fund, helped lead to the bankruptcy of a retailer and damaged West Los Angeles investment bank B. Riley Financial.
Kahn, 52, admitted in a Trenton, N.J., federal court Wednesday to hiding trading losses that brought down Prophecy Asset Management in 2020. The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged the losses exceeded $400 million.
An investor lawsuit has accused Kahn of funneling some of the fund’s money to Franchise Group, a Delaware retail holding company assembled by the investor that owned Vitamin Shoppe, Pet Supplies Plus and other chains.
B. Riley provided $600 million through debt it raised to finance a $2.8-billion management buyout led by Kahn in 2023. It also took a 31% stake in the company and lent Kahn’s investment fund $201 million, largely secured with shares of Franchise Group.
Kahn had done deals with B. Riley co-founder Bryant Riley before partnering with the L.A. businessman on Franchise Group.
However, the buyout didn’t work out amid fallout from the hedge fund scandal and slowing sales at the retailers. Franchise Group filed for bankruptcy in November 2024. A slimmed-down version of the company emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
B. Riley has disclosed in regulatory filings that the firm and Riley have received SEC subpoenas regarding its dealings with Kahn, Franchise group and other matters.
Riley, 58, the firm’s chairman and co-chief executive, has denied knowledge of wrongdoing, and an outside law firm reached the same conclusion.
The failed deal led to huge losses at the financial services firm that pummeled B. Riley’s stock, which had approached $90 in 2021. Shares were trading Friday at $3.98.
The company has marked down its Franchise Group investment, and has spent the last year or so paring debt through refinancing, selling off parts of its business and other steps, including closing offices.
The company announced last month it is changing its name to BRC Group Holdings in January. It did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
At Wednesday’s plea hearing, Assistant U.S. Atty. Kelly Lyons said that Kahn conspired to “defraud dozens of investors who had invested approximately $360 million” through “lies, deception, misleading statements and material omissions.”
U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp released Kahn on a $100,000 bond and set an April 2 sentencing date. He faces up to five years in prison. Kahn, his lawyer and Lyons declined to comment after the hearing.
Kahn is the third Prophecy official charged over the hedge fund’s collapse. Two other executives, John Hughes and Jeffrey Spotts, have also been charged.
Hughes pleaded guilty and is cooperating with prosecutors. Spotts pleaded not guilty and faces trial next year. The two men and Kahn also have been sued by the SEC over the Prophecy collapse.
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
Chatty bots are sharing their hot takes through hundreds of thousands of AI-generated podcasts. And the invasion has just begun.
Though their banter can be a bit banal, the AI podcasters’ confidence and research are now arguably better than most people’s.
“We’ve just begun to cross the threshold of voice AI being pretty much indistinguishable from human,” said Alan Cowen, chief executive of Hume AI, a startup specializing in voice technology. “We’re seeing creators use it in all kinds of ways.”
AI can make podcasts sound better and cost less, industry insiders say, but the growing swarm of new competitors entering an already crowded market is disrupting the industry.
Some podcasters are pushing back, requesting restrictions. Others are already cloning their voices and handing over their podcasts to AI bots.
Popular podcast host Steven Bartlett has used an AI clone to launch a new kind of content aimed at the 13 million followers of his podcast “Diary of a CEO.” On YouTube, his clone narrates “100 CEOs With Steven Bartlett,” which adds AI-generated animation to Bartlett’s cloned voice to tell the life stories of entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Richard Branson.
Erica Mandy, the Redondo Beach-based host of the daily news podcast called “The Newsworthy,” let an AI voice fill in for her earlier this year after she lost her voice from laryngitis and her backup host bailed out.
She fed her script into a text-to-speech model and selected a female AI voice from ElevenLabs to speak for her.
“I still recorded the show with my very hoarse voice, but then put the AI voice over that, telling the audience from the very beginning, I’m sick,” Mandy said.
Mandy had previously used ElevenLabs for its voice isolation feature, which uses AI to remove ambient noise from interviews.
Her chatbot host elicited mixed responses from listeners. Some asked if she was OK. One fan said she should never do it again. Most weren’t sure what to think.
“A lot of people were like, ‘That was weird,’” Mandy said.
In podcasting, many listeners feel strong bonds to hosts they listen to regularly. The slow encroachment of AI voices for one-off episodes, canned ad reads, sentence replacement in postproduction or translation into multiple languages has sparked anger as well as curiosity from both creators and consumers of the content.
Augmenting or replacing host reads with AI is perceived by many as a breach of trust and as trivializing the human connection listeners have with hosts, said Megan Lazovick, vice president of Edison Research, a podcast research company.
Jason Saldanha of PRX, a podcast network that represents human creators such as Ezra Klein, said the tsunami of AI podcasts won’t attract premium ad rates.
“Adding more podcasts in a tyranny of choice environment is not great,” he said. “I’m not interested in devaluing premium.”
Still, platforms such as YouTube and Spotify have introduced features for creators to clone their voice and translate their content into multiple languages to increase reach and revenue. A new generation of voice cloning companies, many with operations in California, offers better emotion, tone, pacing and overall voice quality.
Hume AI, which is based in New York but has a big research team in California, raised $50 million last year and has tens of thousands of creators using its software to generate audiobooks, podcasts, films, voice-overs for videos and dialogue generation in video games.
“We focus our platform on being able to edit content so that you can take in postproduction an existing podcast and regenerate a sentence in the same voice, with the same prosody or emotional intonation using instant cloning,” said company CEO Cowen.
Some are using the tech to carpet-bomb the market with content.
Los Angeles podcasting studio Inception Point AI has produced its 200,000 podcast episodes, accounting for 1% of all podcasts published on the internet, according to CEO Jeanine Wright.
The podcasts are so cheap to make that they can focus on tiny topics, like local weather, small sports teams, gardening and other niche subjects.
Instead of a studio searching for a specific “hit” podcast idea, it takes just $1 to produce an episode so that they can be profitable with just 25 people listening.
“That means most of the stuff that we make, we have really an unlimited amount of experimentation and creative freedom for what we want to do,” Wright said.
One of its popular synthetic hosts is Vivian Steele, an AI celebrity gossip columnist with a sassy voice and a sharp tongue. “I am indeed AI-powered — which means I’ve got receipts older than your grandmother’s jewelry box, and a memory sharper than a stiletto heel on marble. No forgetting, no forgiving, and definitely no filter,” the AI discloses itself at the start of the podcast.
“We’ve kind of molded her more towards what the audience wants,” said Katie Brown, chief content officer at Inception Point, who helps design the personalities of the AI podcasters.
Inception Point has built a roster of more than 100 AI personalities whose characteristics, voices and likenesses are crafted for podcast audiences. Its AI hosts include Clare Delish, a cooking guidance expert, and garden enthusiast Nigel Thistledown.
The technology also makes it easy to get podcasts up quickly. Inception has found some success with flash biographies posted promptly in connection to people in the news. It uses AI software to spot a trending personality and create two episodes, complete with promo art and a trailer.
When Charlie Kirk was shot, its AI immediately created two shows called “Charlie Kirk Death” and “Charlie Kirk Manhunt” as a part of the biography series.
“We were able to create all of that content, each with different angles, pulling from different news sources, and we were able to get that content up within an hour,” Wright said.
Speed is key when it comes to breaking news, so its AI podcasts reached the top of some charts.
“Our content was coming up, really dominating the list of what people were searching for,” she said.
Across Apple and Spotify, Inception Point podcasts have now garnered 400,000 subscribers.
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