No Cap, Zennials Don't Care about Cable News

Before I dive into a no-longer-President's 82-year-old state of mind, ignoring the current President's 6'3", 224lb attempt at turning the U.S. government into an episode of the Real Housewives of DC, let's discuss the fact that no one's listening anyway.

Currently in the United States there are roughly 76 million "Boomers," or people born between 1946 and 1964 in the baby boom post World War II. I won't get conspiratorial here about the fact that 77 million people voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 election, and that those numbers are undoubtedly linked, but why? Well, it boils down to where we get our news.

Most of us grew up in a house that watched cable or a local affiliate (in my case, CTV out of British Columbia when the weather was clear and the rabbit ears were cocked just right) at 7am, 5pm, 9pm, and/or 11pm. In between we had Sally Jessy Raphael and soaps to keep us busy, and a stack of World Book Encyclopedias for answering the questions Dan Rather couldn't.

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But when the internet arrived, it brought with it not only the ability to look up anything we wanted, fact or otherwise, but it also gave us hundreds of options for getting our news. So while our parents and grandparents still rely heavily on Fox News and CNN, the rest of us survive on Wi-Fi in coffee shops, libraries, and schools, logging in for breaking news every five minutes.

It started pretty simply, with Millennial influencers flocking to YouTube and drawing us quietly in with their Minecraft builds and livestreaming. But we quickly switched over to political commentary and independent Substack accounts from influencers like Aaron Parnas and the Meiselas brothers at Meidas Touch for our "details at 11." Now legacy news correspondents like Don Lemon, Joy-Ann Reid, and Jim Acosta are either jumping ship and joining the online independent news media, or licking their wounds and finding a lucrative new home in Millennial-et-al content. Meanwhile, political action committees like the Lincoln Project, and advocacy groups like 50501 and the Women's March have seen exponential growth among the same younger population. But is it really lucrative? Let's see how the numbers break down.

The Meidas Touch Podcast

According to demographic fact tanks like Statista, Boomers are still the most likely to sit down and watch the 5 o'clock news. In fact, a whopping 32% claim to watch cable news on a regular basis, while only 13% rely on streaming, and a tiny 3% on podcasts, including YouTube. This is down from almost 60% of cable subscriptions in the 1990s. They do, however, seem to prefer news websites, which may come as no surprise to those of us gagging on our parents' conspiratorial political views that land in our inbox two and three links at a time.

As for the rest of us, America is getting younger and bringing with it more technology, especially as a means for gathering information. Generation X, while still upwards of 60 years-old, relies much more heavily on social media for their news at 33%, especially TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube, but still doesn't lean into the growing podcast market. Millennials, on the other hand, are starting to listen to podcasts more, and rely 13% more than Xers on social media. In all of these generations, surprisingly, the radio is still pretty popular, and I'd like to know who's not listening to Spotify on the commute in. Delilah, is that you?

But Gen Z wins the award for Most-Online News Subscriber, with a whopping 50% preferring TikTok and YouTube for all of their current events. They don't care about the radio. They don't care about the newspaper (which, honestly, none of these groups really do), and they don't view text-based websites all that much for fact-finding and information. But with nearly 70 million U.S. voting citizens born between 1997 and 2012, only 6% are watching CNN, MSNBC, Fox, CBS, you name it. Instead, they're getting their news from Jon Stewart, from Aaron Parnas, from David Pakman, from Joe Rogan, from Harry Sisson, and even from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, herself. And while the legacy news media are burning their muzzles and running to independent sources like Substack, believe me when I say that Zennials (that's all of us, baby) are waiting for Rachel Maddow on bated breath. Come on, girl.

That brings me back to yesterday's launch of Jake Tapper's newest tell-all Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, the scandalous story of an elderly former President's aptitude for being old, but failing to mention, ya know, successfully advancing the GDP and bolstering the U.S. economy. Unfortunately you can't review the book, like it or not, because the response was so colorful Amazon shut it down after (checks notes) 15 reviews. The negative comments seem to have disappeared in the last 12 hours.

In conclusion, Jake can write whatever he wants. Because the same people who are reading his books are also watching cable news, 76 million U.S. citizens age 65 and older. Meanwhile 70 million Gen Z, 74 million Millennials, and 65 million Gen Xers aren't. So what applies to stories, and drama, and statistics, and "news" today, likely won't matter to the voting public of tomorrow. And if people like Jake Tapper and legacy news media don't figure that out, then they're running a very short race.

A final note to my beautiful boomers: generalizations were made in this article, as they have been about all generations before and after Baby Boomers. Our music is noise, we don’t know what hard work is, and cursive is a dying art. Believe me when I say, I know that not everyone fits into the stereotype. I, as a millennial, can hold down a job. Not the popular take. My kids, Gen Alphas, all know cursive. Again, not the standard. But I hope we can all take our generation’s unfounded hard knocks with a grain of salt, and know that if we work together and write together, the world and all democracies within it, will be a much better place. Love ya.

Ellie is an author, editor, and small-business owner, and works with filmmakers, podcasts, and journalists all over the world. She lives with her family just outside of New York City.