Are ‘The Young Turks’ the Future of Broadcast News?

    “I think we’re going to topple all the old media,” says Cenk Uygur of “The Young Turks.” (Andy Kropa / AP)

“As Bernie Sanders is the political revolution, we are the media revolution,” Cenk Uygur, host of the self-proclaimed “biggest online news show in the world,” told The Guardian after his 30-minute interview with Sanders topped 1 million online views.

“We didn’t get to be this popular because I’m such a great host. That’s not how something this big arises. We got this big because we believe the same thing that the majority of the American people believe, and we’re almost alone in the media believing it.”

Joe Sandler Clarke reports at The Guardian:

Today, The Young Turks (TYT) is an online news network of 32 YouTube channels, 12 of which they own and operate. The main channel, which deals chiefly with politics, entertainment and hard news stories, has 2.7 million subscribers. …

[Says Uygur:] “There’s no end to this thing. I think we’re going to topple all the old media. Poor CNN doing all their shows based on insiders, appealing to, at most, 2% of the audience: what a horrible, losing strategy. The average age of their audience is 64 years-old. Our average is under-35. Of course, they have a couple of billion dollars, which helps, but I don’t see how they’ll compete with us in the long-run.”

“In the old days you were taught that you should be dispassionate, but I think the opposite. I hire a lot of hosts, reporters, producers and I hire people who care about the news. The old model, of being dispassionate, neutral: it doesn’t work online. That means I’ve got an opinion and I’m sometimes loud. But you can’t do a revolution quietly.”

“Behind all the bravado,” Clarke adds, “Uygur is one of the sharpest and most thoughtful political commentators in the United States.”

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—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.