Nolte: Disney Slashes 6% of Staff, Shutters 538 Site — Another Leftist Propaganda Outlet Goes Down!
More layoffs have hit the Disney Grooming Syndicate, a wipe out of about 200 jobs, which represents six percent of the staff in two major divisions.
“About 200 employees are being let go at Disney’s ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks unit, people familiar with the matter” told the Wall Street Journal. “Ratings and revenue are down at many cable channels as consumers ditch cable packages and advertisers flee for streaming services and digital platforms.”
The most interesting nugget is the news that ABC is shutting down the once-popular 538, the site created by Nate Silver touted as a data-driven piece of science that would predict the outcome of elections, along with things like the Oscars and sporting events.
Under Silver the site did pretty well … until the arrival of Donald Trump in 2016. Suddenly, “data-driven” began to look more like “wishcasting,” and the site became a joke. Silver left his creation in 2023, 538 blew the 2024 presidential election, and now it’s gone. So sad. Buh-bye.
Giving up 538 is a Big Deal. The whole idea behind that site was not to reflect what public opinion said in the polling, but to shape public opinion—especially in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Rasmussen is one of the most accurate pollsters out there and has been for 20 years. Still, 538 dismissed their polls. That alone spoke volumes about the site’s credibility.
What the closing of 538 tells me is that it was no longer an effective piece of propaganda. Over time, after so many failures, people stopped buying what ABC News was selling: Hey, this is objective number crunching! This is science! No, really. Where is everyone going?
Anyone who wants accurate poll aggregation can go to RealClearPolitics (RCP). RCP doesn’t tweak the numbers seeking to demoralize Republicans. RCP reports the numbers, aggregates the averages, and gets it as right as anyone can.
Why do I call the shuttering of 538 a Big Deal? Because we defeated 538. New Media’s commitment to accuracy curb-stomped that propaganda outlet over and over, and now the Disney Grooming Syndicate is surrendering the godfather of data-driven poll sites. And it wasn’t only RCP. All kinds of online folks did a better job of analyzing the polls, while 538 turned itself into a punchline. One of those online sites that humiliated 538 in 2024 was Nate Silver’s new site.
The entertainment job cuts at Disney are exactly as the Wall Street Journal describes: a direct result of people canceling their cable packages and moving to streaming. This inevitability is something I’ve been predicting for 15 years. Cable TV money was a windfall for mega-entertainment companies like Disney. Streaming services are not. As people continue switching to streaming, more and more of that cable TV money will dry up.
Netflix is making a ton of money. The other streaming services are either losing a ton or squeaking out a tiny profit.
Everything is changing for the better. The less power these monsters have, the safer we all are.
#LearnToCoalmine
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
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