Elizabeth Vargas On Going Up Against Cable News Rivals With NewsNation Evening Newscast: “They Had To Grow An Audience, And We Will Too”
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Elizabeth Vargas spent more than 20 years at ABC News, including stints co-anchoring World News Tonight, hosting 20/20 and news anchoring Good Morning America.
Tonight, she will return to the breakneck pace of a daily news show, but this time on a network that captures a fraction of the broadcast network audience and even that of larger cable news rivals.
More from Deadline
Related Story
Chris Cuomo Launches New NewsNation Gig: “This Show Is Going To Be Different From What I’ve Done In The Past Because I’m Different”
Related Story
The CW Hit By New Round Of Layoffs
Related Story
Despite Carriage Dispute Keeping CBS Stations Off Fubo TV, Nexstar President Tom Carter Expects Bundle Revenue To Keep Flowing: "We Do Not See A Cliff"
NewsNation’s 6 p.m. ET Elizabeth Vargas Reports “will be the newscast of record” for the relatively new entrant in the cable news landscape. She’s the latest TV news veteran to join Nexstar’s venture, which has been expanding its original programming lineup, with plans to be a 24/5 Monday-Friday operation on April 24.
“I worked for 23 years for ABC News,” she said. “I loved my time there. Obviously I wouldn’t have stayed as long as I did if I hadn’t loved it so much. But there’s something really exciting about being part of a brand new news operation, where everything isn’t all baked in.”
Her hourlong newscast will not be another World News Tonight, the most watched newscast, but will feature more live interviews and “go deeper” than what is perhaps possible in the 30-minute framework, she said.
It’s also a cable start-up, with more capacity to try out different ideas.
“This is a chance to do my own show, a brand new show designed around me, and to be part of a news operation building itself up from the ground level,” Vargas said.
After leaving ABC News in 2018, Vargas has served as anchor of A&E Investigates, the banner for non-fiction documentary programming, and serves as host and executive producer of iCrime, the syndicated series that focuses on crimes that have been captured on smart phones, with interviews with victims, witnesses and law enforcement on the different cases. She will continue with iCrime, but, after guest anchoring NewsNation Prime starting last year, said that she “just could not resist the invitation to dive back in.”
She also said that the show will feature live interviews — “what I love to do most” — which will be conducive to what she calls “one of the most historic news cycles of my generation.” The show will not be opinion based, but will emphasize the news of the day, as well as issues that don’t always get as much airtime, like mental health. She serves on the board of directors of the Partnership to End Addiction, and wrote about her own recovery in 2016, Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction.
“I hope to really use this show and this platform to start talking in a really thoughtful way about these issues, because they impact tens of millions of Americans in a really dire way,” she said. “Part of the reason many people don’t get help for depression or anxiety or addiction is because of the stigma around it, and the way you chip away at the stigma is to start talking about it openly and thoughtfully.”
She has featured issues of addiction and treatment on her podcast, Heart of the Matter.
“In today’s news, there’s a lot of tip-toeing around and yet at the same time, incredibly harsh judgment of Senator [John] Fetterman for taking time off to treat his depression. We’ve seen the weaponization of Hunter Biden’s addiction. Whatever you think of the Biden family, and whatever you think of Hunter, what he did… there’s a way to talk about what he might have done or didn’t do without getting into the salacious. I just think the way we talk about addiction in this country really still stigmatizes what is a deeply painful, destructive, awful thing that tens of millions of Americans struggle with.”
She said that she still hears from people who say that her memoir led them to get help or better understand someone who was struggling. “So I feel like it was a real gift for me to be able to turn what was a painful chapter of my life into something that maybe helped others,” she said.
NewsNation officially launched in 2021 as a network for news consumers who didn’t want an ideological bent. And even as the network has been adding more pundits, commentators and personalities to its lineup, Vargas said that its non-biased journalism remains part of its mission.
“I think it is when you venture into the cable news landscape that you tend to see a lot more bias, there’s just no other way to put it,” she said. “But I really feel strongly that this is what NewsNation is built upon, is that we have 10% of the country who may identify as being far right conservative, and 10% of the country who may identify as far left progressive Democrats, and then you have got 80% in the middle, which is where I am as an American citizen and as somebody who has voted in many elections, split my ticket between Republican and Democratic candidates.”
Vargas added, “There is a huge majority of the country that does not want to watch news that has a strict, extreme ideological agenda, and that’s the audience we are aiming for.”
Since its launch, NewsNation has bolstered its nighttime schedule with a number of veterans of cable and broadcast news including Ashleigh Banfield, Dan Abrams and Leland Vittert, as well as Chris Cuomo, who has been featuring regular interviews with the one-time king of cable news opinion, Bill O’Reilly.
The ratings numbers are still a fraction of news network audiences.
According to Nielsen, NewsNation averaged 96,000 total viewers in primetime in March, ranking 71st among all cable networks. That is far less than the lowest-rated major cable news network, CNN, which averaged 473,000.
I think it is ridiculous to think that you’re going to launch a brand new cable news network and attract a massive audience. That will happen years down the road. You have to be patient. You’re growing something here.
vargas
News industry analyst Andrew Tyndall has doubts of the demand for a stand-alone nightly newscast, noting the advantage that broadcast networks have being paired with affiliates’ local newscasts. He noted that Shepard Smith, coming off of a high-profile departure from Fox News, tried and failed to launch his own 7 p.m. ET newscast at CNBC, with the resources of the NBC News division to back him up. Tyndall also noted that other networks, like Al-Jazeera and Vice, have tried to develop general-interest newscasts. “The competitive field is not quite as empty as NewsNation believes when it compares itself only with cable news and not with legacy broadcast television,” he said.
In the nighttime hours, the major cable news networks also have steered away from newscasts in favor of opinion and commentary. Even NewsNation has evolved from its origins to offer doses of it. In the hour preceding Elizabeth Vargas Reports, the channel is adding a panel opinion show, The Hill, moderated by Vittert. It will go up against Fox News’ The Five, the panel show that is now cable news’ most watched program.
“We are under no illusions,” Vargas said. “There are a lot of great options to watch the news. I’m hoping that people will give us a shot and see that this is a place they can come to, and for an hour once a day, to really get a thoughtful, in-depth analysis about what is really happening in the world.”
NewsNation executives have promoted the growth of the network audience, by 200% in March compared with the same month two years earlier. That’s still “off of a low base,” Nexstar CEO Perry Sook said in a recent investor call, but “we’re the only cable news network that is growing, and we continue to grow.” Sook also compared NewsNation to previous channel incarnation WGN America. Sook told investors that they were “getting higher cost per thousands in news programming than we did in off-network programming.”
“We’ve been able to substantially grow our distribution revenue because of news content and being one of five networks rather than one of 100 general entertainment networks,” Sook said. “If you follow the decline in general entertainment network ratings, we couldn’t have made the pivot at a better time.” He said that they expect to be a 24/7 cable news network by the end of 2024.
Vargas also pointed to early days of cable news networks in the 80s and 90s. She said she has read press clippings from back then, and saw reference to their scant audiences and even to “the little watched Fox News.”
“I think it is ridiculous to think that you’re going to launch a brand new cable news network and attract a massive audience,” Vargas said. “That will happen years down the road. You have to be patient. You’re growing something here. When you look at the history of what are behemoths now in the cable news landscape … they had to attract an audience. They had to grow an audience, and we will too.”
Best of Deadline
Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
