Alex Wagner has returned to primetime hours on MS NOW — but not in the way viewers might expect.
Wagner is among a bevy of hosts from progressive outlet Crooked Media who can be seen on MS NOW every Saturday night at 9 in clips from the collective’s sundry podcasts. When Wagner held forth as a regular weekday primetime anchor on predecessor outlet MSNBC not too long ago, she didn’t often swear or look mischievous. Now viewers can hear her and her colleagues drop a more-than-occasional f-bomb and launch provocative broadsides against the Trump administration that might even make Lawrence O’Donnell blanch.
The show features cruder-than-usual graphics. The hosts are frequently seen with little makeup and shiny faces, speaking to each other from home offices or bare-bones studios. None of it is live.
No matter. Through the first four episodes of the series, which debuted in late February, more than half of the viewers were new to MS NOW on Saturday nights, according to a person familiar with the data, and nearly two-thirds of the audience between the ages of 25 and 54 were new to the timeslot. MS NOW declined to make executives available for comment.
Many of the nation’s biggest TV-news outlets spent the past year cutting ties with or scaling back the work of some of their longest-serving and best-known anchors. Among those who have exited or taken on a smaller range of duties: Hoda Kotb, Andrea Mitchell, Chris Wallace, and Howard Kurtz. Here come some potential replacements.
Mainstream TV-news organizations are fascinated with a group of independent journalists and provocative hosts who already operate their own digital-media ventures and want to see them grow quickly. “The networks are going to where the audience is going. Their audience is going home and scrolling across the iPhone and not watching television,” says Frank Sesno, a professor at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs. “The networks are adjusting. Can they be part of this, or is it too little, too late? Or too weird?”
Most of the major TV-news organizations are striking new and intriguing deals with so-called “creators.” Some of these digitally savvy personalities are experts in important niches like technology, healthcare or national security. Others are former legacy news anchors, who have gained traction by slinging challenging oratory. But nearly all of them can be had for a price that is significantly less than that of a full-time employee, says Brent Magid, who leads an eponymous consultancy firm that has advised TV networks and stations for decades. What’s more, all of them operate or are members of outside media ventures, meaning that MS NOW, NBC News, CBS News and others are hitching their corporate fortunes to people whose top priority may be the health of their own endeavors and not always those of the company employing them.
Last week, British news giant Sky Media unveiled a deal with Noosphere, an upstart digital news outlet that works with anchors, journalists and documentarians including Chuck Todd, Brody Mullins and Chris Cilizza, to use its technology to create new ways of featuring reporters who specialize in defense and security with interested audiences. The large CAA talent agency has placed new focus on matching creators with traditional news organizations, and in November, enlisted Becky Van Dercook, a former CBS News producer who has experience with managing social media, to advise clients on how to navigate some of the news medium’s newest forms. Piers Morgan, best known in the U.S. as a former primetime talk show host for CNN, has launched a digital-media venture called “Uncensored” that is working with behind-the scenes financial luminaries including The Raine Group and Antenna Group to raise $30 million to expand programming. Rashida Jones, formerly the president of MSNBC, joined the company in March as CEO.
NBC News in March unveiled an alliance with technology journalist Joanna Stern, who will deliver reports and explainers to NBC News even as she builds her own business. “We do think that this is a unique partnership and a new model for NBC, and quite frankly, for others,” says Rebecca Blumenstein, NBC News’ president of editorial, during a recent interview. She adds: “We were mostly interested in a partnership that allows Joanna to do whatever she is going to do, and anchors her exclusively to NBC.” CNN last week tapped Ari Shapiro, a veteran of NPR who left it last year, to launch a new podcast opposite Audie Cornish, a CNN host who previously worked at the public-media outlet.
Some of the traditional news perches aren’t waiting for creators to come knocking. MS NOW viewers know Nicolle Wallace best for the analysis and interviews she delivers on the weekday staple “Deadline: The White House.” But she has branched off into deeper newsmaker interviews on a podcast, “The Best People,” that often turns up on the cable schedule. CNN spurred much reaction by having Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper test less-professional formats on air. Cooper was spotted in attire that was not a formal as his usual wardrobe, while talking into a big microphone, and Tapper hosted one episode of his show, “The Lead” from an office festooned with colorful posters. CBS News is eager to find new platforms for current staffers, says Sofia Efthimiatou, senior vice president of talent and brand at CBS News.
“We need to occupy the Venn diagram that combines the best of both worlds, of legacy and independent. Nobody has done this so far,” she says. “This is something we need to imagine first. Ideally, in five years, we will have succeeded.”
The industry may have to move even faster. In an era when video podcasters are seeing strong audience growth, “now is the time to do these deals,” says Magid. “Creators may have the upper hand in the next two years.”
*******
The media industry has been here before. Not too long ago, traditional companies rushed to strike alliances with a host of digital upstarts including Vice, Buzzfeed and Vox. The philosophy at the time was similar. Younger consumers were gravitating to news and information delivered in new formats and more adventuresome ways. And yet, the digital arrivistes could only gain so much traction with a broader customer base and needed a boost from tie-ins with old-school counterparts. All three of the aforementioned companies have since seen their trajectories cool.
Of course, this isn’t 2016. Over the past decade, the media sector has become ever more fragmented, except, perhaps, for sports. Individual personalities, podcasters and journalists hold more sway with younger viewers than decades-old newsrooms. Ask Joe Rogan.
CBS News is eager to find new voices from these realms, says Bari Weiss, editor in chief of the Paramount Skydance outlet. “The kind of talent that we are looking for are people who are amphibious. They are capable of, yes, reading off a teleprompter when necessary, but also doing man on the street interviews, speaking fluently in a casual podcast, writing in a clear and crisp way,” she says during a recent interview. “Candidly, what we are asking for of talent in 2026 is a lot. It’s special. And it’s not what has historically been typical. But there are people capable of doing it. We are just always going to be hungry for these people wherever they exist, whether they are inside CBS or if they are on the outside.”
Fox News moved early on the trend, crafting a licensing pact with the hosts of the popular conservative “Ruthless” podcast in July. “We had a number of others who reached out and wanted to figure out a similar relationship,” says John Ashbrook, one of the four “Ruthless” podcasters, but “the only thing” Fox News executives wanted was for the team “to do more of what we were already publishing, and that was very attractive.”
Executives from across the news spectrum say these alliances boost the creators’ audience — almost immediately. Aaron McLean, a podcaster who specializes in military affairs, joined CBS News as a national security analyst in March, and, says Weiss, “subscriptions to his podcast have more than doubled since he came on.” Since signing up with Fox News, “our YouTube subscriptions have doubled,” says Ashbrook. “That comes within the first six months, comes with the notoriety and the additional opportunities for more people to see our content.”
In TV-news circles, there are questions about how far this all can go. Alliances with independents and provocateurs can bring younger crowds to the traditional news fold in an era when such viewership is not guaranteed. And yet, there is worry that one of the new personalities might go rogue; do something that doesn’t adhere to an organization’s journalism standards; or, most challenging, do something controversial on their own platform that becomes associated with the mainstream news venue that employs them.
“You have to make sure what they talk about and what they’re good at doing aligns with your brand. You have to make sure that you have a level of trust in them, that they’re not just a live wire that’s going to go off the rails,” says Magid. “You have to do background checks.”
CBS News recently grappled with such problems after Peter Attia, a celebrated expert on longevity and aging who was hired as a contributor earlier this year, became embroiled in an outside controversy. His name was mentioned more than 1,700 times in a raft of documents tied to Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019. Attia was found to have a friendly relationship with Epstein, and that made having him contribute to CBS News programs a difficult feat to accomplish, as he would most likely have to be grilled on the situation.
“Dr. Attia’s contributor role was newly established and had not yet meaningfully begun. As such, he stepped back to ensure his involvement didn’t become a distraction from the important work being done at CBS,” a spokesman for Attia said at the time. “He wishes the network and its leadership well and has no further comment at this time.”
Weiss declined to comment on the matter, but said of relationships with new voices: “There are people with an incredible track record of having the kind of guardrails for themselves as independents that we expect and our viewers expect at CBS.”
NBC News can rely on past experience with Joanna Stern to guide its relationship in the future, says Blumenstein. “We know Joanna well, and she’s one of the most informed experts on how technology is shaping our future in every way, and she also knows standards and has worked in a space where those are taken very seriously. We are confident she’s going to bring that to her work at NBC as well,” the executive said, noting that Stern “is also known for being very rigorous and thoughtful about her reporting. That all gives us confidence.”
Monitoring these new partners may become a large part of the task of keeping them in the fold. “This is the big question — how to manage the moment versus the legacy, how to manage the freewheeling nature of the vertical-video-podcast-influencer world when your reputation has been built on the stoic credibility of traditional journalists,” says Sesno. “That’s a reputational challenge. It’s a brand challenge. And it’s a mission challenge.”
*******
In a different era, these personalities might have been called “contributors” or “analysts.” TV-news outlets would sign them to deals and expect them to be available when stories broke tied to areas of their knowledge. An aviation expert was sure to be on hand, then, when a plane crashed, and a former member of the U.S. military would be instantly available in case of war. These arrangements still exist today.
Younger audiences would rather hear from independent fact-finders than old-school guests. People who have grown up watching YouTube programs and following TikTok figures feel more comfortable with such personalities, says Magid. Modern consumers “are more engaged with them,” he says. “They probably are able to tell a more engaging story,” because they publish their own findings and analysis with a frequent cadence. Approximately 38% of adults under 30 say they regularly get news from news influencers, according to 2025 data from Pew Research, and more likely than older adults to consider someone a journalist if they write their own newsletter or make their own news-related videos or posts on social media.
Talent managers are seeing similar dynamics. “There are certain topical areas where people are more interested in hearing from a creator as opposed to some form of contributor,” notes Hasan Hashmi, an agent at WME who works with several independent journalists. Video podcasters and newsletter writers “provide a lot of the conversation to audiences that the networks, frankly, don’t reach.”
The desire to merge audiences — younger viewers for the mainstream news groups and broader audiences for the digital upstarts — is at the crux of many of these new agreements, which are expected to get more ambitious as time progresses.
Traditional contributors have typically been lumped into “a one size fits all deal,” says Marc Paskin, co-head of the news and broadcasting department at the large UTA talent agency. “This is a completely different model, where we have to get into the nuances of each talent’s business and priorities.”
Joanna Stern’s deal with NBC News calls for her to work as a correspondent even as she builds out her own operation. She says she welcomes the alliance. “This is really hard and only for a certain type of person,” she says. The “mainstream reach” she will get by working with NBC News can only help. But she’s very mindful that there is a wide swath of people who will only see her via her own venture. When she was working at The Wall Street Journal, she says, “I started realizing I was focusing so much on audiences that were off the main WSJ platform: YouTube, newsletters.” Her hope is to help Americans grapple with all kinds of new technology challenges, including A.I. “There are ways I can picture growing this to be a new technology hub, and I have thoughts about the next generation of tech journalists.”
CBS News is now led by an executive who hails from the creator ranks. Weiss launched and built The Free Press, a publication that questions many prevailing attitudes, and sold it to Paramount for a reported $150 million. She thinks her experience gives the organization an edge. “The job is, can we be the bridge between the authenticity and the freedom and the aliveness of the new world and the scale and resources and standards of the old world?” Weiss asks. “If we can do that, we will do something really exceptional.”
Look for lots of experiments in months to come. The trick is to get creators “in front of audiences that aren’t on Instagram or YouTube, where there is real monetization benefit for the networks,” says Hashmi. “The more we take swings at this, the more symbiotic the relationship we can create between creators and broadcast talent.” Some people expect that the larger media companies will at some point seek to invest in the upstart businesses, cementing the links they are just now trying to forge. “My hope is they will expand the aperture of what they would consider,” says Paskin.
Joanna Stern says she’s not quite ready for that discussion. First, she must get her business off the ground. NBC News’ Blumenstein seems open to the possibility: “We hope to have a long standing relationship with Joanna and we will see what happens.” So too will the rest of the news business.
