Netflix To Experiment With News Programming, Partners With Left-Wing Daily Beast To Cover News Events

Streaming giant Netflix has long avoided news programming, but the company has reportedly given the go-ahead for an experimental news program in partnership with a far-left news outlet, the Daily Beast.Semafor reports that Netflix has purchased a “pilot television series” from the Daily Beast.“Produced in conjunction with Bright North Studios, the Daily Beast pilot will run around 30 minutes and focus on a topical, buzzy news event or series of events in recent days,” a media reporter for Semafor, Maxwell Tani, wrote. “The project is in the early stages, according to people familiar with it.” However, he said it is not expected to have the “kind of sharp political focus that has scared some tech companies out of getting more into the news business.”The episodes are expected to be produced about a week or two after news events.The avowedly liberal Daily Beast, a struggling online publication with a small audience that is owned by a media mogul, Barry Diller, may seem like an unlikely choice for a streaming giant’s first foray into news. But the obscurity of the Daily Beast could work to Netflix’s advantage, by reducing scrutiny. Bright North Studios, the producing partner, is an experienced documentary production company that’s owned by Red Bird IMI, whose CEO is a former CNN boss, Jeff Zucker. Netflix’s reported move comes as the streaming giant is increasingly wary of YouTube, which has quietly become the dominant podcast platform and offers a large amount of news content. The chief executive of Netflix, Ted Sarandos, told Semafor earlier this year that YouTube influencers produce “really interesting, compelling programming to watch” that can be timelier than other content and a major attraction for viewers. The Daily Beast venture is the latest effort by a streaming platform without a news coverage operation to contract out to a publisher to provide news content. These platforms tend to go with liberal outlets. HBO had a seven-year partnership with a left-wing outlet, Vice, which ended in 2019. That partnership offered a daily news program, “Vice News Tonight,” that was supposed to be targeted toward a younger audience. It was one of HBO’s lowest-rated shows and eventually was shifted to Showtime and then faded away. HBO tried again to have a news docuseries, which was also produced by a liberal news outlet, Axios. While the program won an Emmy and featured some buzzy interviews with politicians such as Presidents Biden and Trump, Puck’s Dylan Byers reported in 2021 that HBO executives had “lost their appetite for news programming as they focus on building out their streaming business,” and they decided not to renew their contract with Axios. Amazon also attempted to dip its toes into the news world. The streaming giant contracted a liberal former NBC News personality, Brian Williams, to host a newscast on the night of the 2024 election. The event received mixed reviews. The Washington Post’s television critic, Lili Loofbourow, said Mr. Williams “alternated between bouts of eloquence … and flubs.”“Williams had no particular wisdom for viewers reeling at the prospect of a vengeful, unconstrained Trump backed by a Republican-majority Senate beyond noting ‘the spectacular collapse of the party in power’ and expressing a hope that the telecast ‘made a little streaming history along the way,’” she wrote. Some media insiders have argued that streaming services will have to provide news programs to give their subscribers a more rounded offering of programs. However, others have argued that such companies should avoid trying to get into the breaking news industry and instead contract with other companies to produce newsmagazine-style programming. While Semafori noted that some tech companies have avoided news content due to concerns about politics, Netflix has long been accused of producing “woke” content. GLAAD’s Annual Studio Responsibility Index for 2022 found that Netflix was one of the studios that produced the highest amount of “LGBTQ-inclusive” content. The company has weathered past political controversies, such as when supporters of the MAGA movement called to boycott Netflix after it was disclosed that the company’s co-founder and executive chairman, Reed Hastings, donated $7 million to Vice President Harris’s 2024 campaign. Mr. Sarandon is also a major Democratic donor.But the one area where Netflix has gone against the grain has been with standup comedy. Mr. Sarandos has backed controversial comedians who offended Netflix’s easily-triggered Hollywood workforce. In 2021, he stood up to pressure from his staff and moved forward with a comedy special featuring Dave Chappelle, who’s enraged the transgender lobby. Mr. Sarandos defended his decision in an email message to staff that some of his employees found very triggering. Ultimately, he told the Wall Street Journal that what he “should have led with in those emails was humanity.”“I should have recognized the fact that a group of our employees was really hurting,” he added. But Mr. Sarandos has doubled down on controversial comedians. Netflix recently gave a deal to Tony Hinchcliffe, the comedian who horrified the left when he opened a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden in the fall of 2024.Semafor reports that Netflix’s pilot with the Daily Beast is not expected to be too political and that the company is partnering with a “digital media tabloid” that has a variety of entertainment and media stories. However, the Daily Beast also produces a steady stream of anti-Trump stories and has employed left-wring writers such as Taylor Lorenz and Molly Jong-Fast. While the goal of the Netflix pilot series may be to avoid far-left political content, it is likely that its episodes will have at least a tinge of a liberal position, given the editorial makeup of the outlet. Netflix declined to comment. Representatives for the Daily Beast did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.

Netflix To Experiment With News Programming, Partners With Left-Wing Daily Beast To Cover News Events

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