Sarah Palin Launches Subscription Based Online TV Channel

Sarah-Palin-at-Podium

Sarah Palin is launching her own online channel:

Sarah Palin says she’s fed up with traditional news media outlets. So she’s starting her own online channel.

In a Sunday video, the former Republican vice presidential nominee announced the Sarah Palin Channel, a subscription-based Web site that she says will offer news, video chats with her and behind-the-scenes glimpses of speeches and political events she attends.

The venture marks Palin’s latest broadside against news outlets she has long accused of unfair coverage, including of her 2008 campaign. It’s also an attempt to make her voice heard ahead of the midterm elections. She has hit the campaign trail his year on behalf of Republican congressional hopefuls.

In a separate post on Facebook, Palin directly takes on The Washington Post, arguing it has “fallen like a lead balloon” since the days of writing about the Watergate scandal.

“Whereas you once doggedly covered the 18.5 minute gap in Nixon’s White House communications, you’ve virtually ignored the Obama Administration’s 1.2 million minutes of deleted communications by just one of the agencies under Obama’s executive branch,” she writes.

Palin says her new Web site is a response to mainstream media outlets she has routinely accused of dodging important issues and slanting coverage.

A subscription will cost $9.95 a month or $99.95 a year.

In her two-minute announcement video, Palin repeatedly criticizes the media. She also vows to talk about ideas that “Washington doesn’t want you to hear” about.

Palin isn’t the first conservative to take this route, of course. Glenn Beck started the trend with his Blaze network that started in the wake of his departure from Fox News Channel several years ago, and while the network apparently doesn’t release any verifiable subscription statistics it is apparently successful enough to keep going. Beck’s network, of course, involves far more than just Beck’s show, and includes content from others that have joined the network in recent years. There is no indication at this point that Palin’s online gig will have a similar arrangement. Whether it does or not, though, Palin herself will most likely find enough people willing to pay $100 a year for, well, whatever it is she’s actually end up doing, although apparently it will involve some kind of hunting show similar to Sarah Palin’s Alaska, as well as political commentary. At the very least, though, this would seem to indicate that Palin has no plans of even pretending to tease the possibility of a Presidential run in 2016. There’s a lot more money, and a lot less work, in pushing this kind of nonsense if people are willing to pay for it.

Conor Freidersdorf reviews the content on the website and comes away with this observation:

What’s so striking is Palin’s ability to take content much like what she said as a vice-presidential candidate, then again as a handsomely paid contributor to a gigantic media corporation, and successfully package it as what “the powers that be” don’t want you to hear. There are, I’m quite sure, things that “the powers that be,” however defined, really don’t want us to hear. I strongly suspect that “let’s drill for more oil and gas,” whether one agrees or disagrees with the sentiment, is one that’s not at all threatening to one single member of America’s governing elite.

“Bold” this ain’t.

There is much more content on the Sarah Palin Channel: e.g., a blog run by Bristol Palin; “The Case of Obama’s Impeachment,” which is labeled as “best of” content, but is just a link to her Fox News op-ed; and “An American Icon,” where Palin speaks enthusiastically, and seemingly off-the-cuff, about meeting Billy Graham: “He’s got this envelopment of God’s favor around him that’s kept him out of the politics of it all, that’ll kind of warp you and set you up for some failure,” she says.

The production value is poor, the Palin syntax in some of the monologues suggest that lots of content isn’t even scripted, and the same cultural perspective can be found on Fox, or GBTV, or talk radio. All of which is to say that the site offers just one thing you can’t get (in comparable quantity) elsewhere: Sarah Palin herself. If the channel succeeds it will be on the strength of her ability to sustain a fan base.

Well, as a great American has been credited with saying, albeit apparently erroneously, there’s a sucker born every minute. So I’m sure Sarah will succeed.

Anyway, here’s the video:

FILED UNDER: US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. gVOR08 says:

    The potential upside is that maybe POLITICO won’t subscribe, and so won’t be able to stenograph everything she says.

  2. mantis says:

    I wouldn’t suggest subscribing for a whole year at once, despite the discount. She may just quit after six months.

  3. superdestroyer says:

    Once again a totally irrelevant Sarah Palin is mentioned. I suspect that she will be mentioned again before any relevant leader in the Democratic Party is mentioned.

  4. Senyordave says:

    Let’s see. I can get Boomerang network on my basic cable, and watch Huckleberry Hound bumble his way through some zany situations. Or I could pay $100 a year to listen to Sarah Palin pontificate on how Barack Obama is Satan reincarnated. I think I’ll stick with the purple hound, he’s funnier and infinitely more coherent.

  5. Senyordave says:

    @superdestroyer: Why shouldn’t she be mentioned? She was the Republican nominee for vice president only six years ago! The GOP thought this person was qualified to be POTUS. Until we hear mea culpas from McCain and his people, and major GOP party leaders explicitely saying they were wrong, she is relevant, since I assume most of these people still think she is qualified to be POTUS.

  6. Maggie says:

    I think the picture of her shrugging, says it all:
    . “Who knows? I don’t have to explain or do anything new, just rerun old clips. After all, , I am Sarah Palin, a washed up Beauty Queen/Governor/ Vice Prez nominee/ Conservative Wingnuts darling/Media Ho, who still needs to feel popular, & even if it flops, I get to be on TV and you suckers are paying money for it, , you betcha!”

  7. CSK says:

    Ailes must not have renewed her Fox contract.

  8. superdestroyer says:

    @Senyordave:

    She is less relevant than John Edwards or Joe Lieberman. When was the last time anyone paid attention to them. Sarah Palin serves only one purpose, so that Democrats can distract themselves from issues of policy and governance.

  9. legion says:

    And grifters keep on grifting, so long as gullible rubes keep on paying them. When the income from this no longer keeps Caribou Barbie in the style to which she’s become accustomed, I fully expect her and Santorum and maybe Michelle Bachmann to go into 80s-style televangelism…

  10. Facebones says:

    @Senyordave:

    I can get Boomerang network on my basic cable, and watch Huckleberry Hound bumble his way through some zany situations.

    Lindsey Graham’s on Boomerang now?

  11. Facebones says:

    I get the feeling that most of the subscriptions will come from the producers of various Sunday morning news shows and the writing staff of The Daily Show and SNL.

  12. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @superdestroyer: Once again SD comments on yet another Sarah Palin post about there being yet another Sarah Palin post. Like lightning and thunder.

  13. Tillman says:

    Poor Sarah Palin. She doesn’t know about torrenting and anonymity networks. Though I guess her intended audience doesn’t either.

    Also, a really bad idea to make your subscription more expensive than Netflix.

  14. Senyordave says:

    @superdestroyer: How is she less relevant than Edwards or Lieberman? And while Edwards turned out to be completely unqualified on a moral basis to be POTUs, none of that was known at the time. Palin showed her lack of qualifications almost immediately and on an ongoing basis. Plus we now know that McCain’s people knew this as soon as they vetted her (of course they made the mistake of vetting her after they named her as the nominee). Lieberman, while being a weasal IMO, does have the basic qualifications.

  15. Tillman says:

    @superdestroyer: She’s about as relevant as those two politically. The difference between her and them is they don’t, to my knowledge, pontificate on current events and have a dedicated PAC in either of their names. The Joe Lieberman fan base isn’t comparable to the Sarah Palin base in quantity.

  16. CSK says:

    @mantis:

    It will be interesting to track how successful the site is through http://www.alexa.com.

  17. legion says:

    @Facebones:
    Lindsey Graham’s on Boomerang now?
    Well, since Droopy Dawg, aka Joe Lieberman, headed out, he’s all we’ve got… But there’s always Bolton’s Yosemite Sam impersonation!

  18. Buffalo Rude says:

    She is less relevant than John Edwards or Joe Lieberman. When was the last time anyone paid attention to them.

    The last time either of them made the news or begged asked us to pay attention them.

    Sarah Palin serves only one purpose, so that Democrats can distract themselves from issues of policy and governance.

    I’m guessing her purpose now-a-days is separating her supporters from their hard-earned money, actually. Democrats/liberals/most-conservatives/most-sentient-beings ain’t spending money keeping her grift afloat; we’re just getting a good chuckle every time she returns to her well of self-deluded acolytes for another con-job.

  19. Paul L. says:

    Odd Doug’s silent over the Eleanor Holmes Norton ‘s brilliant statement that ‘you don’t have a right to know’ what’s going on in government that destroys the stupid statements of that Fascist idiot Palin.

  20. CSK says:

    Here comes Honey Cari–BooBoo.

  21. MarkedMan says:

    I wonder what she actually has to do with this aside from licensing her name out and promising X minutes of commentary per week? From the description on the Atlantic it seems extremely underfunded. What are they going to fill all that dead air with?

  22. al-Ameda says:

    In a Sunday video, the former Republican vice presidential nominee announced the Sarah Palin Channel, a subscription-based Web site that she says will offer news, video chats with her and behind-the-scenes glimpses of speeches and political events she attends.

    Direct grifting? Not a new concept.

  23. CSK says:

    @MarkedMan:

    User-provided content, apparently.

  24. wr says:

    If people are willing to pay for Andrew Sullivan, I guess they’re willing to pay for anything.

  25. Tyrell says:

    @Senyordave: Yes, and I am sticking to ” Spongebob ” and “Tom and Jerry”. I do miss “Rocky and Bulwinkle”.

  26. grumpy realist says:

    Time Magazine has upped the snark quotient on this one,

    She really is getting more and more like one of those “wait! if you order now, you ALSO get….”

    I suspect the next we’ll see is the Sarah Palin Diet Book.

  27. Moosebreath says:

    @MarkedMan:

    “What are they going to fill all that dead air with?”

    As someone I saw online suggested, they can show movies which follow the channel’s political views. Playing tonight — James and the Giant Impeach.

  28. Neil Hudelson says:

    If the suckers that follow her want to give her their hard earned cash, I don’t blame her for taking it. In an odd way I have a bit of respect for her moxy.

  29. Tillman says:

    @Neil Hudelson:

    In an odd way I have a bit of respect for her moxy.

    I disagree with people who say she’s dumb. She has amassed a lot of money and fame (and turned that fame into money) since a failed VP bid almost six years ago now. You can’t be stupid and pull that off as well and as long as she has.

  30. superdestroyer says:

    @Buffalo Rude:

    John Edwards made the news this year for going back to the practice of medical malpractice law. That means that John Edwards now has more influence on health care policy and governance in the U.S. than Sarah Palin. But I guess being snarky about a totally irrelevant person is just too fun to resist.

  31. wr says:

    @superdestroyer: Have you ever convinced a single human being of anything?

    Maybe you should rethink your approach. Constantly repeating the same two whining messages really doesn’t seem to be working for you.

  32. superdestroyer says:

    @wr:

    I have not personally convinced anyone but many wonks and punidts have begun to recognize that the U.S. is headed to being a one party state Just see the post today on the inability of the Republicans to appeal to single women.

    However, most wonks and pundits are so wedded to the idea that the U.S. must have two relevant political parties that they keep thinking some new party will spring up to replace the collapsing Republicans. I just think the more likely model is that most of the current Republican voters just move over and vote in the Democratic Party primaries and the general election will be moot. However, no matter what happens in politics, the one thing that will be definite is that people like Sarah Palin opprotunist who have latched onto the Republican Party for career purposes will still be irrelevant.

  33. Grewgills says:

    @superdestroyer:

    Just see the post today on the inability of the Republicans to appeal to single women.

    That is because of choices they are currently making. They could change a few of those choices and make considerable headway. Is there any reason that Republicans would cease to be Republicans if they didn’t push anti-abortion, anti-birthcontrol positions?

  34. superdestroyer says:

    @Grewgills:

    when you say make a few changes what you are really saying is agree with the Democrats are virtually all issues. Then what would be the point of having a Republican Party if it is just a cheap imitation of the Democratic Party. If disagreement between the two parties will not be tolerated in the future, then the U.S. does not need nor will tolerate two political parties. If elections are to be based solely on personality and charisma, then one party is more than enough.

  35. Andrew E. says:

    @superdestroyer: @<a href="#comment-1957680"

    If Republicans could demonstrate that a) they are willing to acknowledge the issues women have b) they are willing to acknowledge their legitimacy of these issues and c) keeping A and B in mind, they are willing to engage and try to find solutions to these problems- I might take them seriously instead of this crap that doing so makes Republicans more like Democrats.

    Abortion is a prime example. We all know Republicans are mostly in favor of banning the procedure. Fine. But I don't see any Republicans acknowledging there are legitimate reasons women want abortions and working towards solving those problems as best they can. So if Planned Parenthood is forcibly shut down there better be created alternatives to all the other problems the organization deals with such testing for STD's, cancer screenings, family planning and so on. Only 3% of PP services end up being abortion, you know.

    But instead the party gets defined by Rush Limbaugh screaming "Slut!!" and bills to curtail the same sorts of welfare that prevents women from wanting to get an abortion in the first place.

  36. Grewgills says:

    @superdestroyer:

    when you say make a few changes what you are really saying is agree with the Democrats are virtually all issues.

    No, those are the words you are putting in my mouth. Republicans could deemphasize their anti-contraceptive and anti-abortion stances and stop with the ridiculous foot in mouth comments about ”legitimate rape” etc and they would do better with women. That you see those changes as tantamount to a one party state says more about you than it does about any legitimate issue.

  37. grumpy realist says:

    This is from a few years ago, but talk about a collision in the mental hash tables….

    STEAMPUNK PALIN