Transcription
Hey everyone, me Kevin here. Okay, we got to talk about this potential of Elon buying MSNBC.
So first of all, some fun facts: the New York Times is a public company. You might not have known that, but they actually trade. How beautiful is this, by the way? Uh, very, very, very beautiful. But anyway, yeah, so the New York Times is a public company; they’re worth about 8.8 billion. Uh, Jeff Bezos got, I think, a steal on The Washington Post. He picked them up for like $250 million back in 2013, which is pretty remarkable. And uh, Elon Musk obviously paid a little bit of a premium for X at 44 billion, but honestly, he’s doing great things with it. He cut expenses crazily, and advertisers are coming back, which is a huge win for Elon Musk.
Uh, but now there’s talk about potentially Elon buying MSNBC and turning the prime time segments into something where like Joe Rogan gets to have his own show on prime time. Which, I mean, he kind of already has his own show, so I was like, do you really need, uh, like, something daily and scheduled? I don’t know, maybe. Maybe that’s what the people want. Is Joe Rogan like an old 1950s news reporter? “All right, here’s the news today.” You know, it’s almost like he’s going to do an alpha report for you. It’d be kind of cool.
Okay, yeah, well I mean, speaking of cool, this is cool. This is like a winter wonderland. Uh, anyway, it’d be kind of cool. So, but what I want to talk about is the practicality of this and how much would Elon maybe have to fork over?
The reality is the New York Times is a paper, but it’s the largest paper by circulation in the world. Actually, I think USA Today has it beat because they syndicate all the smaller papers, but they’re one of the largest—certainly like the top three—with the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and probably New York Times over there.
Uh, and that’s 8.8 billion, so that’s probably your upper end. Uh, for the big benefit of not just creating your own, like Mark Zuckerberg creating your own Threads, where he already has basically built-in users by basically signing up every single Facebook account for Threads and Instagram account automatically, the biggest benefit to picking up something like an MSNBC would be the TV licenses.
See, actually getting a channel that people are used to going to has a whole lot of value. Having the licenses to do it has a whole lot of value, and then having the sets and the infrastructure—uh, very, very, very, very much value.
Uh, I understand there might be this impression of, “Oh, just set up a camera and go.” It doesn’t work that way with broadcast. Not only that, but the equipment that you need, the trucks that you need, the vans that you need, the, um, I think it’s called LiveU, anyway, um, it’s uh, the streaming connection services basically. Think about MSNBC having their own server infrastructure, uh, to take live streams from events, basically beam them to their trucks, from the cameras—usually backpack mounted units that the camera people have to lug around. It’s a lot.
And uh, and they do that through, you know, usually multiple bonded 5G connections. They have a bunch of different SIM cards in them, bond them together, get the best connection, beam to the truck, beam to the studio. There’s a lot of value in just having the infrastructure to where theoretically Elon could just walk in, replace the hosts, and keep going. Everybody sells a job now.
Now, some people are going to leave, obviously, because you know, MSNBC is basically considered a more left-leaning station. Now maybe I shouldn’t even say more left-leaning. I think it’s just clear to say they lean left.
And uh, you’re going to lose some people, but who cares? Elon would probably fire a bunch of people anyway, especially some of the anchors or CNN or whatever.
So let’s say if the New York Times is at 8.8 billion, and Wapo was 250 mil—that was in 2013—so add, you know, inflation to Wapo, would probably sell today for, you know, 750 or a billion or something like that. Maybe even more, depending on what the subscriber numbers have done, but just economic growth, obviously over those years, last 11 years, everything’s gotten more expensive.
But think about the value of MSNBC. It’s probably being somewhere between 1 to 10 billion. Let’s think about that, okay? Cool. So what does that get you? Well, it gets you the infrastructure to be on mainstream TV and basically be the new mainstream TV every day.
And you can literally, like, rebroadcast everything. I mean, you have media licenses and invites now to everything. You could literally rebroadcast any event that the media goes to on X. You know, anybody who pays eight bucks a month, boom, you get the Elon Musk mainstream news station included. It’s just constantly streaming.
Uh, and you’ve got, you know, professional—basically I’m not talking like, you know, the writers who throw their biases in. I mean like the journalists who stand outside with the mics that are like, “I’m here at the hurricane,” you know, that kind of stuff, live broadcasting that on X.
You didn’t even cover trending topics that happen on X. You get all of Elon’s friends in there or whatever. You now have a voice in a style of medium that you just don’t otherwise have. See, X is cool when you want to be in the scroll mood, which is kind of similar to scrolling on TikTok or YouTube Shorts. It’s scrolling on X—usually it's doom scrolling.
Uh, average video retention on X is extremely low because people aren’t going to X to watch video; they’re going for quick little punchy headlines, “What’s the news? What’s happening in the world?” and move on. You generally don’t get a lot of depth; that’s normal. That’s just the medium.
So this is a side that Elon doesn’t actually have coverage in right now—is that in-depth sort of media or something where somebody’s just playing the news in the background. Heck, even like a CNBC, except it’s like Elon MS, uh, ElonBC or whatever, EBC. You know, uh, the Elon Broadcasting Corporation. There you go, that’s what it’s got to be.
So there’s some real potential there for Elon to, for probably somewhere around, I would guess, 10% worst case, 20% of what he paid for X, which, you know, his net worth just skyrocketed thanks to Tesla. You know he’s absolutely killing it.
Uh, and I keep—people keep using my referral code too. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, sales for this quarter better be sick,” because like a lot of people are going to meetkevin.com/Tesla. Yep, you got it, Kevin, you’re right. If the tax credit goes away, I’d rather buy it now than next year. People keep saying, “Oh no, people are going to wait for the Model Y refresh,” and I’m like, “Yeah, people want a car now.”
The Cybertruck is pretty cool, by the way. I love that freaking thing. Uh, so big shout out to that. But think about this for a moment: could it be done? Yeah, yeah, and Elon has suggested on X that he’d be open to it.
Uh, let me make sure I’m still recording here. Yeah, I am. Okay, good. Uh, he even suggested the most ironic outcome is usually the most likely in relation to this, so he’s definitely thinking about it. He even asked how much it would cost at one point, so it’s like, this is how it started with X.
You know, he was joking like when he was tweeting with people about buying X, he’s like, “Haha, yeah right, how much?” You know, it’s very similar. It’s like, “Haha, yeah right. Oh, that’s kind of a good idea.”
So this is—I just want to really convey here how different the user is, somebody who just sits and has MSNBC on in the background all day long. And you could literally slide in your personalities into an existing network with all the licenses, everything they need. Yes, I realize, you know, being connected with the Trump organization, well, the Trump presidency administration—see, you confuse them, they just blend together—uh, being connected to them and the fact that Elon has not left Moralo since the election.
Uh, well, um, let’s just say he could probably get those licenses pretty easily. Uh, but getting in is like, there’s a lot of infrastructure that would just—I feel like their uptime would basically be immediate, and they’d be taking over a station that at least has viewership already.
And they’d be taking over a station that people have muscle memory of going to that channel, and you’re removing a competitor, right? Like when Elon bought X, not only did he buy, well, Twitter—not only did he buy Twitter, but he bought the users. Some of them left, of course, but he also bought the tendency of going to the app, right? The muscle memory of, “Oh, let me go to Twitter to see what’s going on,” and now it’s X.
Like, there is value to that. So I would say if he bought MSNBC from anywhere between two to 8 billion, he’s actually probably getting a good deal for the empire that he’s trying to build. And it’s honestly kind of brilliant, 4D chess. He could probably put Linda from a in charge of it; she would run it just fine.
The one place you guys are really failing at at X is getting people to watch video, uh, but that’s because you’re trying to serve people video who don’t want to watch a video on X. They want the headlines. So if you want video, buy that. That’s great. And then do what they—you know, take over their YouTube channel as well. Now, and people forget about this. Now you have the staff and the infrastructure to post clips of all your mainstream broadcasts all day long on your YouTube. Boom. Bingo. Like, it’s brilliant.
So, uh, I’m actually a big fan. I think this is exactly like, first of all, how it might happen, but I also think he should, mostly because you’re going to get this balance in news that I don’t think has really existed before, especially if you get some of these more podcasty, you know, deemed right-wingers or whatever sharing their opinions in more of a longer-form format rather than the Fox News six-minute segments.
You know, change it up a little bit. You got the broadcast all day long; you get some new anchors, some new voices out there. It’s really going to give Fox a run for their money. And you know, Trump probably would support the new, you know, I’m going to call it the E NBC pretty rapidly because, you know, they’re so connected.
They could honestly even use it for their Doge cast. You know, there was talk about using or creating some kind of podcast for what Doge did this week: you know, what did you get done this week sort of thing. I think it’s brilliant.
Uh, so there’s endless potential. And then, obviously, you can have built-in ads for Starlink and SpaceX and Tesla. And now, you know, it doesn’t even cost you anything to advertise because you’re freaking channel.
Oh, I can’t stop thinking about the benefits of why Elon should buy MSNBC and how good it would be for not only him but how it would also be good for Republicans. But honestly, I think it would also be good for Americans because you would get a different flavor.
You know, now it’s like you got Fox, which is one type of flavor on TV, uh, and then you have finance media, which is a whole another type of flavor—CNBC or Bloomberg. Uh, and then you have this bundle: your NBC, MSNBC, and CNN, and that’s it. Like, that’s what you get to pick from.
This, I feel like, would be a whole new bucket to pick from. I’d actually be really excited about it. Uh, yeah, I mean, it’s what I would do if I were in his shoes. I just—I respect that there is a huge audience for that sort of television.
And honestly, you probably get a wedge deal on it now that their views have declined like 25% post the election—at least that’s what the New York Times said.
So I love this idea. I’m kind of giddy just thinking about it. So anyway, let me know what you think in the comments down below.
Uh, make sure to sign up for the alpha report; it’s free. meetkevin.com/alpha. Every, uh, day before the market opens—15 minutes prior—I will send you my Alpha report, uh, and give you some insights on what to look for in the day, news summary, and everything else.
Thanks so much for watching, folks. We’ll see you soon. Bye.