Dan Abrams and Ashleigh Banfield Try to Reach the “Marginalized Moderate Majority” at NewsNation
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A year ago NewsNation — the Nexstar-owned cable news channel — rebooted its primetime lineup, bringing Chris Cuomo to 8 p.m., leading into Dan Abrams at 9 p.m. and Ashleigh Banfield at 10 p.m.
The idea of launching a new cable news channel in the 2020s, and in particular a cable news channel that isn’t seeking out a hyper-partisan audience, seemed like a crazy one when Nexstar announced it in 2020.
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NewsNation still has a ways to go, with cable news stalwarts Fox News, MSNBC and CNN still regularly beating it, but executives at Nexstar are unperturbed. Nexstar CEO Perry Sook said as much at the opening of the company’s new New York City studio back in April.
“This network two years in is further ahead than both Fox and CNN were in their journey 40-plus and 25-plus years ago two years in, and they had a whole lot less competition than we do these days,” Sook said. “I’m not concerned about the ratings, the minute by minutes, I’m concerned about doing good television — interesting television, smart television — and growing.”
For Banfield, a veteran of CNN, MSNBC and Court TV, it’s been a refreshing experience.
“I’ve worked at several [cable news outlets], and there are guardrails,” Banfield says. “So to be able to work without those kinds of guardrails was just a very different experience and very enjoyable, after being a journalist for 35 years. It’s quite pleasant to be able to use your editorial judgment daily without having to follow a memo.”
NewsNation has tried to walk a fine line in primetime. It is gunning for what Abrams calls the “marginalized moderate majority” in the U.S. who are sick of the hyper-partisan options, but don’t necessarily want a newscast reminiscent of CNN in the 1980s, when it was a wheel of headlines.
“The goal long term is to have a level of consistency in the perspective of the show,” Abrams says. “And that perspective is of the marginalized moderate majority in this country who have real concerns about the political extremes and are willing to either call them out or ignore them, depending on which one is more appropriate in a particular situation. But it is kind of stunning, the evolution of a cable news in the last few years, to see Fox go harder right, MSNBC go harder left, and to see CNN die on the vine.”
Abrams says that his own perspective has evolved since beginning his show in 2021 (he signed a multiyear contract extension last month).
“I may have initially spent too much time trying to balance everything,” he says. “And now I think that I’ve really gotten into a groove where I’m very comfortable taking very firm positions on stories that sometimes the right will like and sometimes the left will like.”
“The thing I can say without hesitation, is what you are seeing on the air is me,” he adds. “Those are the positions that I take in private conversations. And I don’t worry about being overheard at a restaurant debating or discussing a political topic, because it’s going to be the same point that I’m making on my show.”
Banfield, the veteran newscaster, agrees.
“I don’t shy away from opinion at all, because I feel like there’s a lot of value to having 35 years as a broadcast journalist,” she says.” I’ve been to the rodeo many times, and I think there’s a hunger for my read on events, cases, verdicts.”
“There’s a lot I can bring to the table and so I don’t shy away from that,” she adds. “I am also open to being persuaded. Many times I will utter the words — which I remember back in the day you would never think to utter — ‘I did not know that.’ And I think that the wonderful thing about being honest is it shows a human vulnerability and also an intellectual vulnerability that people identify with and appreciate.”
Ad Fontes, a media watchdog group, conducted a study last month to try and place a range of news outlets on a political bias scale from left to right. Not surprisingly, MSNBC was “strong left,” and Fox News was “strong right,” with the broadcast networks much closer to the center (albeit just slightly left of center). NewsNation was the only TV channel to straddle the “middle.”
Abrams says he regularly hears from people who say “I may not agree with you all of the time, but I love the show.”
“That’s the best compliment to me. Even if you don’t agree with me all the time you still enjoy the show, you still know that I’m coming from a fact-based perspective,” Abrams says. “I’m transparent about my views…what you don’t have is transparency on other networks. But you do have it with Chris Cuomo, you do have it with me, you do have it with Ashleigh. In my view, it allows the audience to judge for themselves.”
“There is no God in broadcasting, there is no voice of God, and maybe that gave people false comfort,” Banfield adds. “But now we’ve empowered a lot more people. They can use their own wisdom and make their own reasoning and judgment.”
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