Blaze Media Grabs Massive Support From Conservative Listeners

Blaze Media has been in the news, with one of its hosts and sports commentators, Jason Whitlock, calling Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy a “total fraud and sellout.” Portnoy fired back at Whitlock in a series of tweets. Who owns Blaze Media?

Blaze Media is the conservative media company that owns Blaze TV. It was created as a result of a merger between TheBlaze, a pay-TV network founded by talk radio personality Glenn Beck, and CRTV (Conservative Review Television), an online subscription network, in 2018. Beck founded TheBlaze in 2011 after leaving FOX News, where he drew a large audience.

Mark Levin is the founder of LevinTV, which grew to become CRTV. The company’s CEO is Tyler Cardon and its president is Gaston Mooney.

Blaze TV is an OTT (over-the-top) channel and cornerstone asset of Blaze Media. Blaze Media also owns Blaze Podcast Network, a 24/7 digital TV channel called Live, and Blaze Radio. Before its merger, TheBlaze had a traditional TV channel, but the company has since focused on building a digital empire, which it believes gives it greater control of its distribution.

According to Axios, Blaze Media CEO Tyler Cardon said, “It wasn’t without risk because we were walking away from a substantial amount of revenue, but we wanted to focus on better positioning ourselves for where we see things going within the next 3 to 5 years.” As a result, the newly formed ad company's ad revenue rose 70 percent year-over-year. TheBlaze’s website claims that Blaze Media will reach more than 165 million people every month.

Blaze Media is one of the most profitable conservative media ecosystems, reports The Factual.com. According to Axios’s 2020 report, Blaze Media has built a massive subscriber base of nearly half a million, and they each pay an average $102 per year. Its business model is built around outspoken conservative personalities. MBFC assigns TheBlaze a “far-right bias” and calls it “questionable based on the promotion of conspiracy theories and numerous failed fact checks.”

Even on its website, the company says, “Blaze Media is unapologetically pro-America and pro-free speech, and although the views of our many hosts and writers are varied and diverse, our opinions tend to fall somewhere on the center-right to right of the modern American political spectrum.”

Blaze Media regularly publishes headlines containing emotionally charged language or skewed political bias. Many of its creators have faced controversy for their commentary.