The only thing is that that monitor is only obviously a monitor at first glance in the picture above. The rest of the images messed with my mind as they showed a giant Beck, Godzilla-stomping among regular sized people while in another he appears to be tiny, sitting on a table in front of normal humans in the background, since it’s not immediately clear that one is an image on a large screen.
I found the pictures to be metaphorical since it is true that in a celebrity and public influence and following sense, Beck is both huge and tiny.
Consider a comparison to Oprah, who also left her popular daily television broadcast to start her own network (titled OWN, as it were): On the one hand, Beck is no where near the celebrity that Oprah is – however… This Wall Street Journal article says that GBTV already has more paid subscribers than OWN has total viewers… whoah..
Because Mr. Beck owns the show and the network, he could make substantially more than the $2.5 million salary he got each year at Fox. GBTV is on track to take in more than $20 million in revenue in its debut year, according to a person close to the company.
The television industry will be watching closely to see whether the TV host can preserve his popularity while migrating to the Web, where efforts to get consumers to pay to watch online-only channels are just beginning.
When Mr. Beck announced GBTV in June, the network had 80,000 subscribers. In the months since, GBTV subscribers have swelled to more than 230,000, according to people close to the network, even though Mr. Beck‘s show hasn’t yet begun.
The audience is far less than the more than 2.2 million daily viewers his program on Fox drew, on average, over its 27-month run, which ended in June after clashes with the network’s management.
But it is more than the average 156,000 people who were watching the Oprah Winfrey Network in June.
The thing to consider however, as any Youtube personality like myself can confirm, is that the number of subscribers does not equal the number of viewers. How to compute the difference between the two, I don’t know, but if they’re paying it is kindov secondary to ask “are they actually watching?”. And boy are they paying…
Analyst Rich Greenfield of BTIG Research estimates that GBTV is already generating revenues of $27 million a year from subscription fees by monetizing a mere 1 percent of the total audience for his Fox show, his radio show, his websites (glennbeck.com and theblaze.com) and other outlets.
Mediate sums it up this way:
While Beck’s online venture is still relatively new, it’ll continue to be interesting to observe the different trajectories GBTV and OWN take as they forge their way. Here are two networks, albeit on different platforms, begun by two individuals who are themselves highly recognizable mega-brands. One is gradually building an audience as another is still hoping to find its place on television, and both depend highly on the trust viewers place on their respective founding personalities. Could you imagine what an episode devoted to Beck’s “favorite things” might pan out? Sales of chalk could go through the roof.
Glenn Beck… the tiniest giant in media?…
