Should Jim Acosta wear a tie?
Since the previous anchor left his job at CNN for the past two months, Acosta has usually used his iPhone, broadcasting online several times a week, usually from the dining room. Often he troubleshoots in real time, far from high gloss desks and refined cameras on CNN sets.
One question he faces is the number of “frills” he will add to interviews with former Transport Secretary Pete Battigeg or Top House Democrat Hakem Jeffries, among others.
“The magic here isn't killing or messing around with this organic nature of the show,” said Matt Hoy, Acosta's newly hired executive producer and 30-year CNN veteran.
“The Jim Acosta Show” is a live stream on Subscack, a platform that has recently solidified itself as a television anchor port.
In January, the startup best known for its email newsletters offered the ability to publish live videos to all users. It is now home to a handful of cable stars who have horns from mainstream media jobs amidst lineups, pay cuts and other controversies. Anti-Trump Publishers are particularly well-functioning in Subsack, where politics is the most popular and lucrative category.
Joy Reid began posting regularly to Subrack in March after the MSNBC show was cancelled. On Friday, former CNN anchor Don Lemon joined Substack after a year of live streaming on YouTube. They will join established chart toppers like Mehdi Hasan (formerly MSNBC host) and Dan rather (the former face of CBS News), as well as established chart toppers like Norm Eisen, Jessica Yellin, Chris Cillizza, Elise Labott and Alisyn Camerota.
This new television diaspora has one central proposition. The future of news is casual. Sometimes it's very casual. The anchors lose their seats and can retain the power of their stars as long as they give modern audiences what they want. “Authenticity is the most important thing in my business right now,” as Fox News host became YouTube star Megyn Kelly recently told the New York Times.
“The people at Jim Acosta don't care much, whether Jim Acosta wears pancake makeup or not,” said Molly Jong-Fast, a political analyst at MSNBC and a regular guest on the Substack show.
Last Wednesday, Acosta concluded his 30-minute interview with Jeffries, talking about college basketball. A small orange ball embodied in the hands of the hosts was then delivered by Duke, a beagle starving for fetch. His visible houseplants were previously chuckled on Fox News.
Last month, on his birthday weekend, Lemon used his YouTube channel to have breakfast and lunch. Both lasted for nearly an hour.
CNN's former president and former boss Jeff Zucker said, some of these currently independent journalists: “They just want to hang out and hear from people they like and trust.”
Katie Couric, who founded an independent media company in 2017, discovered the decline of linear television, which has been “occasionally upset.” She said:
But with a newsletter that is approaching dozens of employees and a million subscribers today, she frequently feels that legacy media is “lagging behind the party.” Culick said that broadcasting on social media is “the authenticity of steroids.” Kurik recently drank Oscar party dresses, streamed live news discussions about Ukraine, parked on the sofa in the fashion brand's showroom, and did not put on makeup.
Lemon, who was kicked out by CNN in 2023, said he was almost immediately courted by Sassara, a few months after speaking out about Nicky Haley's age, widely regarded as sexist. Instead, he agreed to bring a new show to X with Elon Musk as his first interview guest in 2024.
The interview was nervous and Lemon filed an ongoing lawsuit when Musk subsequently canceled the $1.5 million deal. (“It's weird to be suing the world's wealthiest man,” Lemon said, but he insisted he didn't think much about it.)
In the meantime, Lemon had grown his YouTube channel to over 656,000 subscribers, uploaded his own take, “Lemon Drop,” alongside interviews with conservative podcaster Candice Owens and Democrat Jasmine Rockett, a Democrat from Texas.
“At first I was scared, 'Oh, no, I'm not on a big broadcast anymore,'” Lemon said. He initially recorded YouTube videos from the expensive and professionally illuminated studio “Cable News Light.”
“You don't need everything you think you need,” he said.
In December, Lemon added a paid membership option to his YouTube channel, with options ranging from around $3-50 per month. The representative refused to disclose his membership number. However, Lemon said the show is profitable, primarily through its ad revenue share on YouTube. He also earned income through social media sponsorships and corporate speaking, which he said was unable to accept while working for CNN.
Reid, who lost her MSNBC slot about a month ago, is still experiencing a “strange life break” without a television schedule and a team of producers, she said.
She is “just tired” and is working on her next step. In an interview, Reed said: “What do I want to do? What am I good at? For now, she has set out to write about democracy to an audience of around 118,000 people.
Acosta surged after sign-off messages encouraged CNN viewers to sign-off messages saying they weren't succumbing to the tyrant. Katherine Valentine, who recruits and contests these political and television characters for Substack, now calls this the “Jim Acosta Model.”
Of his 287,000 readers, Acosta has over 10,000 paid subscribers, but he also refused to provide certain financial figures. When asked in early March if he was close to the $1 million mark in annual revenue, Acosta laughed. “Are you writing a story? (He replied again: “I'm there.”)
Acosta has also been investigating additional content partnerships, such as podcasting agreements, to strengthen his subsack presence. But he still talks about subsacks with the respect of a former university radio host experimenting with “garage rock” or at least “model submarine enthusiasts.”
“I feel like I've stumbled over this really cool hobby. “And I don't know if CNN allowed me to have a presence.” (Current CNN anchor Jake Tapper uses Substack, but as a social media feed, as a repost for CNN clips.)
Some networks have tried to incorporate casual, chaotic products on the internet into their sophisticated lineup, like ESPN acquired the freewheeled “Pat McAfee Show” or when Fox News developed the show with Will Cain's “signature podcast style.”
But many still limit the presence of employees on platforms such as Substack, said Mark Paskin, a talent agent who represents journalists as co-head of news and broadcasts for Lemon's client, United Talent Agency.
“There was always a fear of cannibalism in the audience,” Paskin said. “The truth behind the matter is that these things should be considered partners.”
Until 2026, Lemon has signed a contract with CNN to limit broadcast opportunities with competitors. Will he go back to TV? Maybe if someone made him a “great offer,” he said. But maybe not.
“The longer I do this, the more satisfying I am, the more profitable it becomes, and I will start to love it more,” he said. “I think people in legacy media need to understand what they're doing here and now.”
