TONIGHT: Beta Test Launch For Trump TV

Wired reports:



Tonight, the Trump campaign is kicking off a show that will air on the candidate’s Facebook page every night at 6:30 pm ET via Facebook Live from the campaign war room at Trump Tower. The show will be hosted by Boris Epshteyn, a senior adviser to the campaign, Tomi Lahren, a conservative commentator for Glen Beck’s TheBlaze, and Cliff Sims, another Trump adviser. In tonight’s inaugural episode they will interview Trump campaign manager KellyAnne Conway and adviser Jason Miller. The series, which will stream Trump’s rallies directly each night and feature pre-and post-event commentary, comes on the heels of the campaign’s debate night Facebook Live last week, which brought in more than 9 million views.

If this is the beginning of a media franchise, there is precedence for a major news outlet to sprout out of a single national event, notes Rick Edmonds, a media analyst at the Poynter Institute. Nightline began as a temporary show about the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. “Having the last days of the election as [Trump TV’s] calling card makes perfect sense,” he says. But whether Trump’s Live broadcasts will be an audience building exercise for a future television network or not, the fact is, Trump hardly needs TV to disseminate his message anymore. His Twitter feed is already the equivalent of must-see-TV. A Facebook Live stream is just an extension of that.

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