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The Sarah Palin Channel: Will It Fly?
Variety:The Sarah Palin Channel, which costs $9.95 per month or $99.95 for a one-year subscription, will feature her commentary on “important issues facing the nation,” as well as behind-the-scenes looks into her personal life as “mother, grandmother, wife and neighbor.” Palin serves as executive editor, overseeing all content posted to the channel.
Further
“I want to talk directly to you on our channel, on my terms — and no need to please the powers that be,” Palin, who is also a Fox News contributor, said in a video announcing the channel. “Together, we’ll go beyond the sound bites and cut through the media’s politically correct filter.”
Will Palin be able to provide enough compelling content at those rates?
The channel is modeled after The Blaze, founded by Glenn Beck, but is it right for everyone?
Does this help the cause or is it just more fragmentation and isolation?
Published in General
Don’t think of it as fragmentation and isolation, think of it as a hundred flowers blooming. I mean, competition at work. Think of it as another forum by which DC, Exjon or Franco could make the breakthrough to broadcast media.
Will it work? Of course not! I mean, I love me some Sarah Palin, but is a year of it worth Thatcher-level Rico membership? Do you even get a coffee mug?
But it’s got to be worth a try. And anyone it gives heartburn deserves it.
The article highlights that this is not a Sarah Palin ego trip, but is a venture by media execs. to create a platform for many celebrities to have channels. Palin was just the example.
I wish her all the best in her new venture.
Hey! No fair actually reading the source article!
Now that I’ve done so I think it’ll fail because of the execs involved. (But maybe that’s because I read Rob Long’s books over the weekend.) But $100/yr for a whole passel of personality-driven programming doesn’t sound completely wacky.
They started a company having seen the success of The Blaze (which I rarely see or hear of) which makes a ton of moolah. While I believe content by subscription is the way to go these days, there has to be compelling content. Beck is an old hand at radio (and hosting his own show on Fox) and has a staff of writers and comedians. His operation was already successful. I doubt Palin can generate enough content to justify the fee.
This is where I land. Beck had the capital to back up the venture, the personality to head it, and the staff to man it. I’m not saying Palin can’t make a good go at it, but I think she lacks some of the resources Beck started with. She’s even more niche than Beck, and that’s saying something.
It’s a good addition to her portfolio. Her Sportman’s Channel show has been renewed for 2015 and she’s still on contract at FNC the last I checked.
Will it fly? Sure. TAPP, the people who own the platform, will do well having her on their site. If just a few thousand of the millions who follow her on twitter and fb pony up the cost of 2 cups of designer coffee a month it will pay off quite well for Todd & Sarah.
As for “helping the cause” I’d have to say I don’t know what “the cause” is. It will help promote a certain brand of populist, working-class, conservatism. That brand appears to be ascendant right now which will probably help make the channel a success as well.
Liberals laughed when Glenn Beck left FNC. He went to Texas and decided to own his operation and is now knocking down 10 times the dough. Of course people are going to try to follow that model and the guys at TAPP are giving it a go.
I typically like Palin, but this is a dumb idea. It sounds insulting on the face of it, and the article seems to confirm my initial guess — that a bunch of marketdroids see her as the best way to fleece her flock.
Her blog — er, “station” is hosted on Amazon Web Services, using the Kaltura open-source video platform, and will subsist in the Tapp universe of paid blogg — er, video content providers. Plenty of powers that be.
If she wants to talk to us on her own terms etc, she can try YouTube. This is cashing in, which is fine, but it’s not leadership, and it’s not advocacy.
She’ll be in the same position that all TV stations were in before AT&T was able to wire them together and create networks (1946-48 for the east and midwest; much of Texas and the South 1949-’52).
The problem is there’s too many hours to fill, and not enough of a viewership to pay for enough content to fill it. Beck managed to solve the chicken-vs-egg problem, but as been ably pointed out, he had an unusually good head start. He left Fox with a lot of momentum.
If Palin had done this in 2009, maybe it could have worked. She was at the top of her fame. Like Lindsay Lohan or Cindy Sheehan, you have to know when your image has reached its Sell-By date.
[Deleted – I can’t believe I responded to this.]
I wish her all the good fortune in the world. But what they should do. since everyone has this obession with Alaska is make it an Alaskan themed channel. Its a massive state and one of the last places to go for those with a pioneering spirit.
Who knows if the channel will work but put it out there and see what happens.
Well, I signed up. But I already have a picture of Sarah in my kitchen, so I might be an outlier in the fan department.
Ugh..in 20 years she will be on an E! reality TV show.
Is she cooking or just being hot?
If I had a pic of Reagan, he’d be in my library.
She’s standing in front of the Statue of Liberty in the picture. I put the picture in the kitchen by the window through which we can see the Freedom Tower.
:-)
And will that bother your normal television watching habits? Why the disdain?
Disdain? Perhaps. I find her to be a very shallow person more interested in her own celebrity than anything else. She is the Kim Kardashian of the Conservative movement. I don’t get why people still think she is great.
Kim Kardashian has done pretty much nothing other than putting out a sex tape to become famous. Sarah Palin is a very accomplished woman, you don’t have to like her but she has done quite a lot, on her own too not riding on her husband or father’s coat tails. I don’t think she’s shallow or a fame wh***. I think she saw an opportunity to get her ideas out there while enriching herself in the process. Hey win/ win for her, if only we should all be so lucky. Her style is not my cup of tea but I know she has a big following from Americans that feel left out of the popular culture and she goes after that demographic, which is very large.
She is as popular as Glenn Beck. I think Gary is probably right that she should have done this years ago if she was going to do it. And $10 a month is high considering if, unlike Beck, she doesn’t have a team of researchers and reporters to back her up. As I recall, Beck offered more than just himself.
Still, there is a market for it. And, like Matede, I don’t understand why any conservative would object to her trying to profit from her opinions if she can do it.
You can look at the actual offer here: TAPPTV.com. At the moment they have one (1) channel.The Sarah Palin thing was a hook to get coverage.
TAPP (it’s like ‘TV’ and ‘app’, geddit?) is looking for “ultra-niche personalities and their super-fans” like (to use their examples) “Glenn Beck, Louis CK, Jon Stewart, Rand Paul”. They go on:
It probably won’t fly. I don’t think she has the talent. She’s no Oprah.
I don’t like her persona (I don’t know her as a person), and don’t see why so many people are fans.
I wish her well, but won’t be watching.
What exactly are her accomplishments? She was Governor of Alaska for like a year before she quit to star on Fox News and then she was selected to be McCain’s VP. Am I missing something? That her fans are dedicated is without a doubt, but so are Kim Kardashian’s.
Still not sure where this vitrol is coming from regarding Sarah Palin? Last time I checked becoming Governor of a state is a pretty big accomplishment. Even becoming Mayor of your town is a big accomplisment but she’s had others, as well. And you know why she quit her position, if you had trumped up ethics charges brought up against you over and over again just because the left doesn’t like you and you had to pay for it yourself I think you’d would bow out before it bankrupted you as well.
You have the sequence of events out of order. I’m definitely not a Palin fan, but she was a pretty good governor before she was tapped for VP. Since then, I agree that she has been less than impressive, but at one time she was on track to be a substantive and successful conservative leader. That she chose a different path is certainly disappointing, but it does not make her a Kardashian.
You betcha!
I don’t really buy that excuse. Do you think Mrs. Thatcher would have resigned were she in Palin’s position? I don’t.
The ethics charges certainly played a role in her decision to step down, but its hard to avoid the conclusion that once she had become a national celebrity and a darling of the right it was hard for her to go back to governing one of America’s least populace and most remote states. Particularly since her ability to cash in on her fame would have been steadily diminished as time went by.
Well since Mrs. Thatcher wasn’t put in that position we will never know, also she was in a different position. I defend Sarah Palin because she gets piled on enough by the left. How they went after her during the campaign was a disgrace and I don’t know what I would have done if that were done to me and my family. Of course once you put yourself out there you know you’ll get some backlash but I doubt she was anticipating that much backlash. So if she wants to make lemonade from lemons good on her.
I agree that her treatment by the left is unfair, but simply being treated unfairly by the left does not make someone virtuous. I don’t have a problem with Sarah Palin, but I don’t understand why people think of her as a great leader or, at this point, even a serious political figure.
I never said it made her virtuous. I doubt she’ll run for office again, I think she likes the influence she has. Plus she has a big and loyal following, so she’s proven her leadership bonafides. That being said, I like Sarah Palin but I wouldn’t say I’m a fan, per se. She’s a bit too folksy for me and the “you betcha” thing can get a little grating. But I see the lefts reaction to a woman who has similar beliefs as me, and I don’t like it, so I have a soft spot for her.
I’ll pass. I’ve already got Sean Hannity to hammer the obvious and never offer an original thought.
Love Beck or hate him, you at least have to admit he comes up with some pretty crazy stuff that you don’t see anywhere else. Palin will just keep parroting the talking points of the moment.