‘All Voices Under One Roof’: Cable News Emigres Like Mark Halperin, Megyn Kelly Find Success With Populist Media Model

Broadcast news talent once flocked to work under the umbrella of a cable news company, but now some of the industry’s best and brightest are striking out on their own.

Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly are prime examples. The pair of Fox News expats, once the well-paid, front-facing stars of the network, are now thriving with their own independent media apparatuses.

Carlson’s new venture, the Tucker Carlson Network (TCN) has amassed over a million subscribers on YouTube. Carlson’s own personal YouTube channel, which he launched shortly after his 2023 Fox ouster, has racked up nearly four times that. (RELATED: Dan Crenshaw Says He’ll ‘F*cking Kill’ Tucker Carlson, Immediately Lies About It)

Kelly, for her part, has carved out her own internet niche, garnering millions of views and downloads on her own independent broadcast “The Megyn Kelly Show.”

Both Carlson and Kelly regularly rack up millions of views on their YouTube shows alone, not counting the play they get on podcast platforms like Spotify and Apple. Carlson also uploads all of his episodes to X where they regularly receive millions of impressions.

An April 10 episode with Romanian politician Călin Georgescu has over three million impressions on X as of April 14.

Călin Georgescu is the most popular political figure in Romania and one of the bravest and wisest politicians in the world. This fall he ran for president on a platform against “war, technocracy and debt” and would have won, until the Biden administration pushed to cancel the… pic.twitter.com/iRWkrrZEsq

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 10, 2025

Juxtaposed with the ratings of their former broadcast homes, Carlson and Kelly are doing quite well.

Fox News dominated 2025’s first quarter, averaging over three million primetime viewers a night, according to Adweek. Its liberal competitors paled in comparison, with CNN and MSNBC combining for about half of that.

Though Fox News improved on its 2024 numbers for the first quarter, the media giant did so with a significantly larger budget than the smaller independent operations.

“I think that way of doing it is just a relic,” Steve Krakauer, a journalist and media critic who also executive produces “The Megyn Kelly Show,” told the Daily Caller. 

MEGYN KELLY: “Last month on [CNN’s] YouTube feed, they had 155M views and we were 147M … Just me and my six producers versus every single show on CNN … The month of November, I beat all of them.” 🔥 pic.twitter.com/dCuaMvWv7r

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) March 2, 2025

He pointed to the glitz and glamour of legacy broadcast media and contrasted it with the relatively low-cost product of popular podcasts.

“Joe Rogan, even Call Her Daddy, they’ve gotten to this nice mix of, it feels professional, feels polished, but it feels new. And that, I think goes a long way to the feeling of intimacy that comes with the new medium,” Krakauer said.

Kelly has threaded that needle of intimacy and polish and leveraged it to launch her own media network, MK Media, which will host three additional creators.

.@MegynKelly announces the launch of her “MK Media” podcast network, and the first three hosts to join.

Watch below, and subscribe:https://t.co/a002a62Yjd pic.twitter.com/iSGB7XBKLb

— The Megyn Kelly Show (@MegynKellyShow) March 25, 2025

One such creator is a fellow cable news refugee, Mark Halperin, a veteran news producer who once served as ABC News’s political director.

Halperin, who NBC ousted in 2017 following sexual harassment allegations, has been making waves with an innovative new YouTube talk show.

With financial backing, Halperin launched “2WAY” in Oct. 2024. The platform combines the expertise of Halperin — along with his co-hosts former Trump White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and longtime Democratic operative Dan Turrentine — and lets average citizens video conference in to ask them questions.

The show’s unofficial mantra is “peace, love and understanding.” Oft-repeated by Halperin, it demonstrates the different path they’re taking amidst a media environment that leans into political polarization.

Acknowledging that media is becoming increasingly tribal, Turrentine argued that there is a market for the “2WAY” product.

“Where I think we are unique, and there is a marketplace, is if you can get people who get along. So we go into shows not thinking, how do we create a viral clip of a fight, of a contrast, of a Scott Jennings ‘let me give it to him’ type of thing. We go into it thinking, how can we try to get a clip, so to speak, of a really smart set of takes from both sides?” (RELATED: Bush-Era Republicans Flourished As Anti-Trumpers — Scott Jennings Took A Different Path)

While the platform has yet to explode in the way Carlson or Kelly’s have, “2WAY” has steadily grown. The platform now has nearly 70,000 subscribers on YouTube, most coming in the seven months since their October hard launch. Moreover, they’ve been able to build an engaged user base.

“People are looking for authentic community and they’re looking to see people talk about politics and government in a way that’s not divisive and is infused with the presumption of grace and peace, love and understanding,” Halperin told the Caller.

Halperin attributes part of the show’s success to his willingness to hear anyone’s perspective.

“There’s no one we wouldn’t put on. When Bin Laden was alive there were people who sought Bin Laden interviews and people who didn’t. I would do a Bin Laden interview whenever he was available,” Halperin told the Caller.

“We’re not trying to have voices that are centrists, moderate and independent only, although those voices are welcome, but we put on people from the far left and the far right and that’s a very different,” he continued.

Halperin’s record backs up his assertions. “2WAY” has hosted voice on the right such as former Republican Ohio Gov. Mike Kasich and Daily Caller Senior Editor Amber Duke, as well as leftwing scions like current Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna and former Democratic Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan.

“There are some platforms that try to be centrist and there are obviously platforms the far left, the far right. We want all voices under one roof,” Halperin said.

Following the podcast trend, “2WAY” also appears to be a relatively low production value. The twice-daily call-in shows hosted by Halperin, Spicer and Turrentine feature all three personalities video calling in, often taking questions from guests who are also video calling.

Audiences, Turrentine asserted, became conditioned to watching low-production value content during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, creators determined their audiences were far more concerned with quality of content than set design.

“At the end of the day, what people want is to be entertained,” he told the Caller.

“In the news business, that’s insight. What do you know? How can I learn about this? How can I, you know, get the kind of different sides, how can I think about this? And so I think the value is on content and what is unique that you can bring to the marketplace, which is why you see ESPN putting way more into Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith than they are SportsCenter,” Turrentine concluded. (RELATED: Here’s How Stephen A. Smith Would Do In Hypothetical 2028 Election Against Vice President JD Vance)

🚨MUST WATCH🚨

Steven A. Smith: “[HUNTER] WAS ON CRACK.” pic.twitter.com/rWWSQYMwXJ

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 27, 2023

For his part, however, Halperin didn’t want to downplay the effort that goes into making his show happen.

“I don’t think there’s anything distractingly bad about our product, our curations of video elements and still photos and graphics,” he said.

“I think it’s pretty sophisticated and so I’d rather see the right soundbite play over our platform than the wrong soundbite played over a very slicky produced platform. I get we’re not Fox Sports in our sophistication of production, but I think we’re more than good enough and I think we make up for it with really sophisticated curation of elements,” Halperin explained.

As Halperin and countless others demonstrate the podcasting platform’s success, the left has followed suit. Don Lemon, a former CNN star who the network axed the same week as Fox cut ties with Carlson, has been extremely active on YouTube and Instagram, posting daily livestreams on both platforms.

Even Democratic lawmakers have gotten in on the trend. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom launched his own podcast in February as the left seeks to find their own Joe Rogan.

Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear hopped on the trend, dropping the first episode of his new podcast in early April to considerably less fanfare than Newsom’s (3,690 views as of April 14.)

The Democrats will not be nearly as successful as Republicans and independents have been in the new media space, Krakauer posited.

“They’re not anywhere close to the biggest names at these levels,” he told the Caller.

“The categories have been completely broken in the new media space. These are not political shows, but they are. There’s a perception of them now as somewhat on the right, which I think is kind of funny,” Krakauer said.

Krakauer argued that five years ago, shows that some consider right wing, like Rogan’s or comedian Theo Von’s, would have been considered liberal.

“Does Chuck Todd start a podcast and try to compete with this?” Krakauer jokingly asked.

“They could do it for 15 years and they will never have as many downloads as Joe Rogan has. It’s just there. There is something about having a real, needed feel to the new medium,” Krakauer concluded. “You know, there’s, there’s a ceiling on a Jim Acosta that is nowhere close to a Rogan or Theo Von, or, frankly, even a Tucker.”