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Twice recently, the people who run Fox News were reminded of their biggest nightmare. The conservative network Newsmax’s $67 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over false claims after the 2020 election recalled Fox’s own $787.5 million deal with the same company more than two years ago. New legal papers filed last month by a second company suing Fox, Smartmatic, also put an episode they would like to forget back in the news. Between the staggering payment to bypass a defamation trial and revelations about the lengths to which Fox went to avoid telling its audience what it didn’t want to hear about Donald Trump’s defeat, many wondered if its actions in November 2020 would damage Fox News or compel it to change directions. Not so much, it turns out. Fox News Channel has defied gravity with its ratings, and is more popular with viewers this summer than ABC, CBS or NBC. Its top personalities resolutely support Trump, who has filled his second administration with former Fox stars like Pete Hegseth and Jeanine Pirro. Time after time, the White House turns to Fox to make news; shortly after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump was sitting with Sean Hannity. Reached by The Associated Press, Fox declined to make anyone available to speak for this story. No regrets, no surrender An ethos many at Fox share with the president no expressed regrets, no apologies has also shown signs of spreading, given Newsmax’s swagger following the Aug. 11 settlement announcement. Fox News averaged 2.63 million viewers in weekday prime-time for the second quarter of 2025, up 56% from the same period in 2023, the Nielsen company said. While the increase is somewhat inflated since Fox took a hit in the ratings two years ago following the firing of Tucker Carlson, the advance of cord-cutting means that any network gaining viewers now is unusual. MSNBC’s prime-time audience of 1 million this spring was down 21% in two years, and CNN’s viewership of 538,000 was down 6%, Nielsen said. Forty-five percent of people watching one of the top three cable news networks at any given time two years ago were tuned to Fox. This year, that audience share jumped to 62%. Clearly, Fox’s audience is more interested in following a Trump administration than it was for a Joe Biden administration. Just as clearly, the Dominion case had little appreciable impact on viewership. Fox’s audience didn’t really look at that verdict and say, Oh, I cant watch them anymore,’ said Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the conservative Media Research Center. I think Fox’s audience looked at that and said, oh, the left is coming after them. Absorbing some hits and moving on Financially, the Dominion settlement was stiff enough that Newsmax is spreading its payments out over three years. The much larger Fox had a greater ability to absorb its hit. Fox confirmed at the time that it could deduct the settlement from its income taxes, and insurance could make the payment lower. Meanwhile, Fox News is a profit engine and becoming even more so; Axios reported earlier this year that the company expected to make half a billion dollars on non-TV products like books, podcasts and streaming. Carlson was the face of the network before he was fired shortly after the settlement was announced, but Fox has always been able to generate new stars. Carlson took over from Bill O’Reilly when he was fired in 2017. Fox started The Five, arguably its centerpiece show, when Glenn Beck was shown the door in 2011. Jesse Watters now owns Carlson and O’Reilly’s old time slot. Yet, it’s hard to understate the worry many at Fox had about losing audience immediately following the 2020 election. Trump, and many of his fans, were angry that the network declared Biden the winner in Arizona before most news outlets, a pivotal moment in the vote-counting. Internal messages and deposition interviews revealed in court papers tied to Smartmatic’s lawsuit reveal much of that drama. Management criticized anchor Neil Cavuto for ordering his show to cut away from Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany when she began talking about election fraud. News reporters were disciplined for fact-checking some of Trump’s claims. Many in Fox’s audience expressed anger at hearing Trump corrected and wanted to hear conspiracy theories. Cavuto left Fox after 28 years last December. McEnany is now a co-host of Fox’s midday show, Outnumbered. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, hosts a weekend show at Fox. Former Fox politics editor Chris Stirewalt, who was fired by Fox shortly after the network’s correct call in Arizona, identified in a Smartmatic deposition a programming strategy that Fox excels at. The best way to capture an audience is to make them afraid, make them fearful of something to make them hate or resent other people to try to keep them with your telecast and that they’re afraid to change the channel, he said. Fox has also maintained its dominance by playing a form of hardball that Newsmax alleged, in a lawsuit filed this week, violates antitrust laws. Newsmax said Fox has tried to block television distributors from carrying its rival, hired private detectives to investigate Newsmax executives and pressured guests not to appear on the network. In response, Fox said, Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers. Newsmax once expressed regret about coverage. Not anymore Smartmatic said Fox has never retracted, or apologized for, programs that falsely suggested the company was involved in changing votes in 2020. Fox, which would not make an executive available for this story, said fraud charges made by a president or his representatives were newsworthy, and the ntwork is defending itself on free speech grounds. Newsmax has twice publicly expressed some regrets about its post-election coverage. The network settled a lawsuit with Smartmatic in 2024. In a statement aired on Newsmax in December 2020, the network said that no evidence has been offered that Dominion or Smartmatic used software or reprogrammed software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election. The following April, Newsmax apologized for airing false allegations that a Dominion employee, Eric Coomer, manipulated voting machines or tallies to the detriment of Trump in 2020. Coomer, in turn, dropped Newsmax from a defamation lawsuit. According to court papers in the case, Newsmax executive Gary Kanofsky wrote about conspiracy theorists to a colleague shortly after the election: Simply giving them a microphone to spew more anti-election rhetoric and advance their claims without being properly equipped to question the legitimacy or factual accuracy of their assertions may be fun, but its terrible journalism. But Newsmax offered no apology in making the Dominion settlement, announced Aug. 11. The network’s CEO, Chris Ruddy, attacked the judge, saying he effectively entered a confiscation of our property because our reporting was not always sympathetic to Joe Biden. The network said on the air: Newsmax believed it was critically important for the American people to hear both sides of the election disputes that arose in 2020. We stand by our coverage as fair, balanced and conducted within professional standards of journalism. What has changed? Newsmax has grown, and two months after Trump took office again, it went public. It invites members of its audience dominated by Trump fans to invest in the network. If you’re paying attention to your audience at Newsmax, Graham said, you don’t want to give the impression that you’re knuckling under. David Bauder, AP media writer
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The worlds richest man, Elon Musk, stands to get a lot richer in the decade aheadperhaps. Thats because his largest and only publicly traded company has put together a proposal that, if approved by shareholders, would see Musk granted nearly $1 trillion worth of shares. This would not only make Elon Musk the worlds richest individual by a long shot, but the worlds first trillionaire, too. However, for Musk to get this massive payout, there are plenty of conditions attached. Heres what you need to know about Teslas $1 trillion offer to Musk. Whats happened? Today, Tesla, Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA) announced its proposal that would see its CEO, Elon Musk, awarded nearly $1 trillion worth of TSLA shares if the company hit significant milestones over the next decade. The massive compensation package would be the largest for any single individual in history and make Elon Musk the worlds first trillionaire. In an interview with CNBC, Tesla chairwoman Robyn Denholm said the motive behind the compensation plan for its billionaire CEO was to keep him motivated and focused on delivering for the company. Musk has been criticized by Tesla investors this year for diverting his time and attention away from Tesla to his political activities, which have included supporting far-right parties in Europe and serving as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under the Trump Administration. This political involvement has turned off a number of Tesla customers and, in part, contributed to a decline in Tesla sales across various countries in 2025. Teslas compensation package for Musk, worth around $975 billion, aims to get the CEO focused on the car company again. If he performs, if he hits the super ambitious milestones that are in the plan, then he gets equityits 1% for each half a trillion dollars of market cap, plus operational milestones he has to hit in order to do that, Denholm said. Musk currently owns about 13% of Tesla. But for Musk to get the whole of this massive compensation package, which includes a total of more than 423 million additional shares, several milestones need to be reachedincluding ones no company in history has ever achieved. The terms of Elon Musks trillion-dollar Tesla compensation package There are several caveats attached to the potential historic compensation package Tesla is suggesting. First, the compensation consists of 12 tranches of shares that will be paid out if certain milestones are hit. This means Msuk would receive some compensation, but not the total proposed amount if not all the milestones are reached. CNBC reports that the operational milestones of Musks compensation package include: 20 million Tesla vehicles delivered 10 million active FSD subscriptions 1 million robots delivered 1 million Robotaxis in commercial operation A series of adjusted EBITDA benchmarks They also include an ever-increasing Tesla stock price, with the company needing to achieve a market capitalization of $8.5 trillion for Musk to receive the complete pay package. Tesla would need to become the worlds most valuable companyby a long shot To achieve the first milestone in the compensation package, Tesla would need to reach a market cap of $2 trillion. Currently, the company is about $1.1 trillion, which means its stock price would need to nearly double from todays price of $350 per share. That in itself is a big ask, considering Tesla sales have suffered declines in markets around the world in 2025. But for Musk to receive the full nearly $1 trillion compensation package, Teslas value would need to reach a market cap of $8.5 trillion. This would by far make it the most valuable company in history. Currently, the most valuable company ever is Nvidia, with a current market cap of around $4 trillion. The company had a market cap of $4.4 trillion in Augustmaking it the most valuable company in history. Tesla would need to more than double Nvidias current market cap to hit the $8.5 trillion valuation demanded by the compensation package. Or, to put that in another way, Tesla would need to become more valuable than the two most valuable companies todayNvidia (worth $4 trillion) and Microsoft (worth $3.7 trillion)combined. Musks historic pay package isnt a certainty Before Musk even has a shot at becoming the first person to be awarded nearly $1 trillion in compensation, however, Tesla shareholders need to approve the proposed pay package. Its far from certain whether they will do that. The new package will be put to a shareholder vote on November 6. As for Teslas current stock price, as of the time of this writing, TSLA shares are currently up around 3.9% to almost $352 per share after the compensation package proposal was made public. However, year to date, the companys share price is still down. TSLA shares have fallen more than 12% since the beginning of the year, and they remain well below their peak of $488 in December 2024.
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Despite the upsides of progress and innovation, the future can also be a never-ending source of anxiety. For many, early excitement and enthusiasm for experimentation eventually gives way to massive fears about disruption. For creatives especially, recent opinions about the future typically oscillate between absolute doom and relative boon. Still, Ive found that thinking about the future is always worthwhile. In fact, its when creatives are at our best. Thats because since the birth of the internet, the rise of digital display, search, interactive video, and mobile, weve seen the value of being the first to try. To fail. To learn. And to keep going. When social media (and later creators) forced us to think and execute at the speed of culture, we embraced that too. And now, in the AI era, were learning to navigate a landscape where the rules change on a daily basis. As the battles are fought to determine the future of business, culture, and innovation, creatives will always be on the front line. Because when everything is changing all the time, its creativessteeped in popular culture and driving innovation through our ideaswho have the skills and responsibility to lead. Thats why our community needs to be pioneering when navigating the future of creativity. We need to nurture the companies, culture, and talent that push beyond the fear to see an exciting future worth embracing. Shifting perceptions, rising expectations In the creative industry, change is constant. But in my work with the creative organization and educational charity D&AD, reviewing thousands of entries for our awards each year, Ive seen more than just trends coming and going. Ive seen that while technology has become more deeply embedded in the work, the most celebrated ideas are still those that put people at the center: solving real problems, creating connections, and shaping culture. Access to powerful tools has democratized the field, but it has also led to raised expectations. Brands want ideas that move faster, work harder, and live seamlessly across disciplines. Categories that once felt separate, from product design to experiential to impact, are increasingly blurred. This shift is clear in a lot of the work that won this year. Sightwalks from UNACEM is a brilliant idea for tactile sidewalk patterns to help visually impaired people. Apples AirPods Pro 2, with integrated hearing health and hearing aid features, reframed accessibility as an expectation in consumer tech. Spotify Spreadbeats, Thanks for Coke-Creating, and The Everyday Tactician from Xbox each demonstrate how technology can amplify craft while keeping creativity anchored in human needs and cultural context. However advanced the tools become, the most powerful ideas still come from the skill to turn cultural understanding and creative ambition into something new. That truth connects the best of this years winning work, and it will be just as vital as the creative industries continue to evolve. Prepare for the future Ultimately, the best way for creatives to prepare themselves is to continue to nurture the essential human qualities that transcend technology, categories, or mediums. That includes a mindset that thrives on imagination and experimentation, taking advantage of creatives natural flexibility and talent for adaptation so that they can collaborate to develop the most forward-thinking creative ideas. Nurturing that flexibility and adaptation look different depending on where you sit. Within a business, it means building systems that can respond to change without breaking. It also requires structures that allow for input, ambiguity, and iteration as well as a dedication to seeking out talent with different backgrounds, lived experiences, training, and skillsets. Meanwhile, for the creatives themselves, its about learning to stay curious in uncertain moments. And learning to contribute before the path is fully clear while collaborating across their differences in discipline, background, culture, and point of view. The future will always be uncertain. But uncertainty is more than a challenge. It’s an opportunity to develop or strengthen the skills that will make creatives and their unique points of view invaluable in turbulent times. With the right mindset and a supportive environment, creatives can trade their fear of the future for a curiosity that will always keep them on the bleeding edge. Kwame Taylor-Hayford is the cofounder of Kin and president of D&AD.
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