Angelo Carusone: “There will be cascading consequences” for Fox News from Dominion lawsuit and “I think shareholders will start taking action”
Carusone: “I’ve already seen eight law firms begin to organize shareholders of Fox”
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From the March 8, 2023, edition of MSNBC's Alex Wagner Tonight
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): And the dirty secret about Fox News is that they don't need a single ad to be profitable. They would still have a 90% profit margin if they had zero dollars in advertising revenue.
And the same way that One American News was handled -- held accountable in part because of what they were pushing about the conspiracy theories -- but it was also they were overpriced. They were six times market rate. That's what the cable companies were paying for them.
Fox News is overpriced right now. It's overpriced. They are not consistent with market rate, and part of the reason they were able to get those big prices is because the way that they leverage their audience for political power --
ALEX WAGNER (HOST): Yes.
CARUSONE: They leveraged their audiences during these cable fights. And yet, they're a small minority of the larger cable consuming audience. So I -- I do, I am not an optimist, I sit in the fever swamps every day. I know --
WAGNER: You're counting the My Pillow ads.
CARUSONE: I see what this world is how -- how asymmetrical it is. But in this moment, we are at an inflection point. And I do think that there will be cascading consequences. And I think shareholders will start taking action too. I've already seen eight law firms begin to organize shareholders of Fox and say, "Wait, you breached fiduciary duty. You violated your responsibilities."
And I do, I think this is a moment. Now, it doesn't have to be, it's going to require consistency and persistence and action, but there is a real inflection point happening here.