Merit Street Media, the news and entertainment company formed by television talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw two years ago, is experience an audience growth by focusing on issues that appeal to the heartland of America. Now, the company is hoping to win over advertisers with that same approach.
At a presentation during the IAB NewFronts on Wednesday, McGraw and Merit Street Media CEO Ken Solomon said the broadcaster’s approach to delivering news, sports and entertainment to viewers in the so-called “flyover states” of the country has made the company’s flagship network Merit TV stand out from the rest — and people are tuning in.
During the first three months of the year, Merit TV attracted 30 million viewers, an increase of 47 percent compared to the third quarter (Q3) of 2024, according to Nielsen data presented by Solomon. The figure also includes analytics from the Merit TV app and its distribution on free, ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) platforms, according to a footnote spotted by The Desk. Merit TV is distributed on Samsung TV Plus, Vizio WatchFree TV and The Roku Channel, and the company recently inked a partnership with Amazon to provide Merit TV as a free stream within the Prime Video app.
All told, Merit TV’s distribution strategy puts the channel in front of 305 million American households and connected screens on a daily basis, Solomon noted. Broadcast TV has played an important role in reaching viewers, Solomon said, and the company is working with its FAST programming partners on a solution to bring its local TV station affiliates to platforms like Samsung TV Plus in the future.
McGraw spent more than two decades as one of the country’s most-popular TV talk show hosts, with his namesake program distributed by CBS Media Ventures during its run. Few thought he would start a TV network of his own, and the announcement of Merit Street Media came as something of a surprise two years ago.
But McGraw said Merit TV isn’t simply a destination for fans of his talk program to watch repeat and new airings — it serves as a counter to what he considers to be an inequity in the way news and opinion are presented on television.
The idea to form Merit Street Media came at the urging of his wife while the two were flipping around different cable news channels while eating breakfast one morning. After expressing frustration that many of the cable news channels seemed to deliver partisan news, McGraw suggested his wife do something about it because “you are the media,” he recounted on Wednesday.
“What people are focused on in this world today is pretty divisive,” McGraw said. “(But), you cannot remain silent, just so others can remain comfortable. And we’re owning the debate lane at Merit TV. We’re letting all sides come and talk about what they want to talk about, and we’re appealing to the heartland of America.”
For McGraw and Solomon, the message they hoped would resonate with advertisers boiled down to this: Merit Street Media is winning over advertisers with an unconventional approach to broadcasting and content distribution. And there are plenty of opportunities for both sides to make money.
The approach to reaching Americans in flyover states is one that other companies have done, with mixed results. Since the mid-1990s, the Fox News Channel has dominated the cable news ratings with its perspective-driven reporting and right-of-center, prime-time commentary programs that often discuss political issues others overlook.
“The heartland of America — not LA and New York, but everything in-between — they spend more money than those two coasts combined,” McGraw asserted. “They have awakened, and they’re tuning in and seeking us out on an accelerated rate…and I strongly believe that the key to success — and I know there are a lot — but, to me, the key to success is solving a problem that no one else is even addressing.”
It isn’t just on TV where advertisers can reach Merit Street Media’s audience — the company is also exploring ways to help brands reach consumers across Dr. Phil’s digital media and social channels, too.
On Wednesday, Merit Street Media announced a new partnership with marketing firm MadSense (stylized as madSense) that involves the development of a new product called Merit Pulse, which will provide advertisers with “cutting-edge, micro-precise consumer data, capitalizing on McGraw’s expansive online and social media presence.” (The partnership was supposed to be announced during the NewFronts event, but the presentation ran longer than scheduled.)
First previewed in April, Merit Pulse uses artificial intelligence to assign social media topic engagement scores across Merit TV’s linear channel, on-demand platforms and McGraw’s social profiles, then creates precise, cross-platform ad placements on those products.
Last month, executives described Merit Pulse as a “modern-day focus group” that gives brands a more-granular level of insights and data than the traditional measurement platform.
“Each viewer tells us exactly which stories are resonating at that moment and then aligns individual sponsor messaging to Merit TV’s hyper-targeted TV and digital content, finally delivering YouTube-style contextual relevance to free broadcast, pay TV, and digital advertisers and sponsors,” Solomon said in a statement.
The company is also developing content that resembles something other than a traditional TV show, with McGraw recently launching a series of podcasts across audio and video platforms, including YouTube. On YouTube, Merit Street Media and McGraw delivered more than 267 million views during a 12-month period that ended in April, with 41 million hours of content streams, according to YouTube’s analytics.
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Editor’s note: This article was updated Wednesday evening to note that viewership figures offered during the presentation originated from Nielsen, as well as first-party data from apps and streaming platforms.
