‘The Young Turks’ muscles in on news

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Al Gore Cenk Uyger

Before Cenk Uygur switches on the television or checks news sites for the day’s headlines, the host and co-founder of the progressive online news show The Young Turks , scans Twitter and Facebook. He is looking for the stories about politics and pop culture that are generating buzz but that mainstream media outlets are likely to ignore.

Hours later, Mr Uygur slams his fist against a desk and shouts about those topics during his daily programme, which is fast becoming one of the most popular news shows on the web.

“Cenk is killing it today … exposing lying scumbags,” a viewer posted to Twitter on Monday during the two-hour live programme, which spanned issues ranging from Arctic drilling to Scientology and the crisis in Syria. That show drew more than 10,000 views and thousands more comments on YouTube.

The Young Turks offers a window into what could be the future of news programmes. As traditional cable news networks struggle to retain viewers, The Young Turks is attracting an audience of young viewers who, when news breaks, think first to turn to social media and the internet rather than their televisions.

“[When we started the show] the thought was that online video was eventually going to challenge TV and eventually merge with TV. That is exactly what has happened,” says Mr Uygur.
Outlets such as The Young Turks are posing a threat to traditional cable news networks, especially as younger consumers are more likely to seek out free news online, reluctant to subscribe to cable television services and less loyal than traditional viewers to particular programmes.

Aggregate television viewership for the three major cable news channels in the US – Time Warner’s CNN, News Corp’s Fox News and Comcast’s MSNBC – was almost flat in 2011 following double-digit declines in 2010, according to the Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media report. The three networks have all registered average season-to-date declines in primetime ratings this year among 18- to 34-year-old viewers, according to research firm Nielsen.

While the list of news websites that receive the most traffic has tended to include the same mix of players during the past few years, The Young Turks, in partnership with the cable news network Current TV, has elbowed its way into the top ten online news and information video sites. It attracted 2.9m unique US video viewers in May, according to ComScore.
The Young Turks has been years in the making. More than a decade ago, Mr Uygur quit his job as an attorney to start a cable access show. The Young Turks made its debut with a satellite radio show and now airs daily online and on Al Gore’s cable network Current TV.

Giving The Young Turks a boost is its partnership with YouTube. It was one of about 100 channels to receive funding from YouTube last year and now ranks among the top performing channels on the site.

The show has a bare-bones style that lacks the slick production of traditional cable news outlets and costs a fraction of theirs to produce. The Young Turks works with partner companies to sell ads, and revenues are still low. It expects revenues to be about $2m to $3.5m this year, up 50 per cent from last year.
The Young Turks, analysts say, is likely to benefit from the news events of the 2012 political cycle, with the presidential election coming up, and will face challenges maintaining momentum with its fickle audience, analysts said. To stay fresh, the network is in the midst of launching a series of new channels beyond hard news and politics to explore subjects such as sports and celebrity.

“It is clearly having a resonance in the culture, but is it the flavour of the year? Or does it sustain itself and continue to grow?” says Ken Doctor, a media analyst with Outsell. “That is the internet culture. Things go way up and then they can fall.”

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