RED HAT PARTNERSMedia · Culture · Commerce

Investment thesis

We buy media people still watch

News, finance, emerging sports and church. Beats where people still watch live. We buy the business that already makes money, then cut packages from the same footage for the phone. The audience is faith, family and country.

The beats →
There are a lot of people who think our job is to reassure the public every night. I don't subscribe to that at all. I subscribe to leaving people with a rough draft of history.
Peter Jennings Anchoring America, 2003

The audience

The audience is bigger than the coverage

Forty-two percent of Americans read the Bible every week. A year earlier it was thirty percent. Young men drove the jump. News is the biggest thing on cable and nine of its ten top shows already talk to this viewer. The habit is there. The programming is not. We buy what serves this audience today and cut the same footage into packages for the son who watches on his phone.

42%
Weekly Bible reading, 2025
Up from 30% in 2024. Gen Z men 54%, Millennial men 57%.
29%
of cable viewing is news
The largest genre on the dial, April 2026. Sports was 9%.
31%
national weekly attendance
A televised service reaches the parent. The clip reaches the son.

The habit

The anchor desk

For a generation the evening news was an appointment, and the country took the anchor at his word because there was nowhere else to go. The scarcity is gone. The appointment is not. News is still the biggest thing on cable, and broadcast evening news still beats all of it. The habit outlived the newsroom that built it.

Tom Brokaw
NBC Nightly News
Anchor, 1982 to 2004
Peter Jennings
ABC World News Tonight
Anchor, 1983 to 2005
Dan Rather
CBS Evening News
Anchor, 1981 to 2005
It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced.
Tom Brokaw The Greatest Generation, 1998
A television crew working a studio camera in the early years of broadcast
The studio floor · the first years of the broadcast
From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently official: President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time, 2 o'clock Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago.
Walter Cronkite CBS News, November 22, 1963

Rather signed off with Courage. A sign-off worked because the audience knew when to be there.

New York · Market reality

Linear still holds 38 percent of American viewing

Nielsen's Gauge, July 2026. Streaming passed linear in mid-2025. Linear is still standing. And the streaming number counts live apps like YouTube TV, so people are watching live inside that figure too.

Broadcast plus cable is 38.2 percent. Two things in there cannot be spoiled: a ballgame and the news. That is the part worth owning.

Source: Nielsen Gauge, July 2026 data release.

Content dynamics

Nobody spoils a ballgame

In football season sports takes 30 to 34 percent of broadcast viewing, and it only counts if you watch it live. News is 29 percent of cable, the biggest thing on the dial. Older viewers keep the television on. Younger ones watch the highlight.

A studio floor with camera rigs set against a red wall
The desk is the asset · the footage is the second business

Where we buy

The beats

The same test on every beat. A business that already makes money from an audience that pays every month, and a digital desk cutting packages from the same footage.

A congregation with hands raised during a service
Church · verse and worship
A full stadium under floodlights at night
Emerging sports · a younger fan
A stock ticker board showing a price and an intraday chart
Finance · the tape all day

Underwriting

The rundown

Every deal runs on the same clock. The core business carries the return. The packages prove the audience came with it.

On the clock

  • Core asset holds its EBITDA, gross margin and recurring mix, unchanged.
  • The packages out-draw the live hour ten to one inside sixty days.
  • Creator revenue share signed, rather than a salaried anchor bench.
  • Church audience reads older and more local than the sports buy.
  • Median viewer on verse clips under 35, completion above 40%.

The screen

  • A subscriber file with a daily habit and enterprise-paid renewals.
  • Workflow integration deep enough to survive ad-server volatility.
  • Rights that are fragmented and still being priced.
  • A studio that can cut six packages before the market closes.
  • A beat comes off the board the moment it only reaches people already watching.

Value creation

After the close

Data monetization
Package proprietary audience intelligence into tiered enterprise analytics.
Roll-up
Acquire bolt-on enthusiast newsletters and fragmented vertical trade titles.
Event expansion
Scale high-margin hosted buyer summits and specialized virtual conferences.

The desk

Pitch the desk

If you own a media business, run one, or invest in them, send it here. Every pitch reaches the desk and every pitch gets an answer.

Operators working a broadcast control room wall of monitors
The control room · where the show gets made