The trend: One year into the second Trump administration, political pressure is increasingly shaping how media companies operate and how advertisers assess risk. Regulatory signals and political alignment are influencing programming stability, deal viability, and where ads run.

Why it matters: Political conflict has become a material operational risk for media companies, undermining stability across programming, distribution, and advertising. Regulatory pressure, even when informal, is reshaping pricing power and inventory access.

• The Trump administration has used regulatory pressure as a visible lever over legacy media, including FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s threats toward ABC and Disney after Jimmy Kimmel’s criticism, signaling that broadcast licenses can be invoked rhetorically over content decisions.
• Paramount’s $16 million settlement of President Trump’s “60 Minutes” lawsuit, CBS’s cancellation of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” and the hiring of Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News have reinforced that political conflict can affect programming continuity, affiliate distribution, and brand safety for linear TV.
• Paramount’s settlement with Trump was widely viewed as a defensive move, smoothing the path for its Skydance merger and showing that editorial independence can become negotiable during consolidation.

Political considerations are also shaping ad spend, adding asymmetrical risk for brands.

• Trump is an avid Fox News viewer, and the broadcaster has benefited from advertisers seeking proximity to the administration.
• Brands returned to Elon Musk–owned X during his role in the Trump administration despite prior brand safety concerns, while the FTC’s ban on ad boycotts tied to the Omnicom–IPG merger shows how political priorities are influencing agency behavior.
• These shifts carry some downside: Democrats are more likely than Republicans to boycott politically misaligned brands, and younger, more liberal consumers—especially Gen Z—increasingly factor politics into purchasing decisions, threatening long-term brand equity.

Implications for marketers: For marketers, political influence is now a planning variable. Brands must weigh regulatory exposure, deal risk, and audience backlash alongside reach and performance when allocating dollars in an increasingly politicized media environment.

• When Kimmel was blacked out across Nexstar and Sinclair affiliates, viewers migrated to YouTube, where his monologue reached tens of millions within days, illustrating digital video’s importance as a default distribution layer.
• TikTok’s newly formed US venture raises questions about cultural credibility if the venture’s conservative-leaning ownership consortium does anything to diminish its cache with the platform’s young, left-leaning US audience.
• Paramount attempted to leverage its relationships in Washington (and financial backing from Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner) to tilt the regulatory process of a potential Warner Bros. Discovery deal in its favor, representing how entangled media consolidation and politics have become.

Go further: Read our new report, President Trump’s Second Term: How the Administration Has Shifted Retail, Media Advertising, Tech, Health, and Finserv.