\n<\/p>\n
During an early March appearance on CNBC, the Paramount Skydance chief executive, David Ellison, cited a statistic he has come to rely on when laying out his editorial approach for CBS News and, potentially, the cable network he has made a deal to own, CNN. The young media mogul said the networks will prioritize reaching \u201cthe 70% of Americans and really around the world that identify as center-left, as center-right\u201d.<\/p>\n
The idea of an unaddressed center ground is a powerful talking point. In a world of increasingly partisan politics, Ellison\u2019s promise to address the unheard, silent majority packs a punch \u2013 and fits nicely with the approach of one of his most high-profile lieutenants, the heterodox commentator Bari Weiss.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, it appears that Ellison\u2019s 70% figure is not supported by publicly available polling data on the ideological orientation of Americans.<\/p>\n
A recent YouGov survey \u2013 conducted last fall and published in January \u2013 found that only 40% of US adult citizens identify as \u201ccenter-left\u201d, \u201ccenter\u201d or \u201ccenter-right\u201d, not 70%.<\/p>\n
Polling published by Pew that was conducted last year similarly puts the number at 41% (including those who self-identify as \u201cLean Democrat\u201d, \u201cNo Lean\/Refused\u201d, \u201cLean Republican\u201d), while Gallup data puts the percentage of Americans who identify as Republican-leaning independents, non-leaning independents and Democratic-leaning independents at 45%, which the company said was a \u201cnew high\u201d.<\/p>\n
These surveys suggest that the audience that Ellison claims to be targeting, while sizable, does not exist to the degree he has suggested. A spokesperson for Paramount Skydance said the company \u201cstands by the stat\u201d but was not able to provide a particular survey that backed up Ellison\u2019s numbers.<\/p>\n
Ellison seems to have first cited the statistic when speaking with reporters in August. \u201cWe really want to look at the 70% of the country that kind of would define themselves as center-left to center-right and really ensure that it\u2019s a place that can be true to the legacy that we\u2019re inheriting, and we\u2019re going to invest behind that,\u201d he reportedly said.<\/p>\n
During a Bloomberg Media conference in October, Ellison invoked the strategy of another media company he had acquired, Weiss\u2019s Free Press.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat our goal is in news is we want to become the most trusted destination in news media,\u201d Ellison said. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a controversial thing to say right now that the civil discourse that currently exists is not in a great place. We basically believe in all the things that the Free Press believed in: which is we want to speak to the 70% of the audience that identifies themselves as center-left to center-right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ellison has used the stat to suggest that the vast majority of Americans are not actually wedded to one political party \u2013 and therefore would be open to programming from a more neutral perspective. But according to Gallup\u2019s data from 2025, more than half of Americans \u2013 54% \u2013 identify as either Democrats or Republicans, with another 35% characterized as \u201cRepublican-leaning independents\u201d or \u201cDemocratic-leaning independents\u201d. Pew data has the number of self-identified Republicans or Democrats at 59%.<\/p>\n
Daniel Cassino, a professor of government and executive director at Fairleigh Dickinson University\u2019s polling operation, said that Americans have a hard time categorizing their leanings \u2013 but that, based on his interpretation of American National Election Study data, about 47% of respondents could broadly be considered in the centrist range.<\/p>\n
Looking at the implications for Ellison-owned networks, Cassino said that a centrist-oriented news organization could<\/em> be successful, but that it would face an uphill battle. \u201cThe audience for every news channel is largely going to consist of partisans and people who have relatively extreme partisan views, because they\u2019re the ones who care about political news and follow it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n During a recent appearance on Katie Couric\u2019s streaming show, the former CBS News correspondent Scott MacFarlane dismissed the notion that the network was specifically targeting conservative viewers, as had been suggested by a departing producer.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody knows how to do that,\u201d MacFarlane said. \u201cThere can\u2019t be a plan for how to go: \u2018We want to find that 10% of purple, right, conservative, Stark county, Ohio, Macomb county, Michigan, people. The politicians may have a strategy for reaching those people, but television news does not. There\u2019s no formula that works for that.\u201d<\/p>\n The early returns on Ellison-owned and Weiss-run CBS News have not been promising. While 60 Minutes remains a major success, the network\u2019s morning show and flagship evening news program \u2013 anchored by Weiss favorite Tony Dokoupil \u2013 have struggled mightily. The CBS Evening News averaged about 4 million total viewers in March, a new low for the show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During an early March appearance on CNBC, the Paramount Skydance chief executive, David Ellison, cited a statistic he has come to rely on when laying out his editorial approach for CBS News and, potentially, the cable network he has made a deal to own, CNN. The young media mogul said the networks will prioritize reaching<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[540,4699,24129,999,4696,1522,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-47969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-americans","9":"tag-cbs","10":"tag-centrist","11":"tag-david","12":"tag-ellison","13":"tag-story","14":"tag-surveys"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}