The Daily Wire just laid off a chunk of its staff, Candace Owens is comparing it to Enron, and the whole story is a window into where conservative media is going next.
The big picture The Daily Wire — the conservative media company Ben Shapiro co-founded in 2015 — confirmed another major round of layoffs on May 1, concentrated at its Nashville production office. The scale of the cuts is in dispute: the company says 2026 cuts have been around 13% of staff, Puck reported the May 1 round was closer to 20% (~42 people), Candace Owens said the figure was 50-60%, and the Daily Wire’s editor-in-chief called Owens’s number “insane.” Independent tracker layoffhedge.com estimated cumulative job losses across two rounds in 13 months may have crossed 60% of headcount. Whatever the precise number, the broader trend is real.
Why it matters The Daily Wire was, until very recently, one of the most successful right-wing media empires in America. At its peak, co-founder Jeremy Boreing said the company hit over $200 million in annual revenue. Today, Ben Shapiro’s YouTube channel has lost an estimated 70 to 85% of its viewership from peak, depending on which dataset you use. His podcast currently ranks 48th on Spotify — behind Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Theo Von, and Joe Rogan, all of whom either left or were pushed out of legacy media operations. The bigger story isn’t whether the Daily Wire survives. It’s that the era of consolidated, brand-name conservative media may be ending.
How the Daily Wire got here The company rode the anti-woke wave of the late 2010s, paired aggressive social media with Shapiro’s personal brand, and by 2020 was Facebook’s top English-language publisher for three consecutive months. It then expanded aggressively into film, streaming, kids’ programming, and book publishing. Matt Walsh’s documentaries What is a Woman? and Am I Racist? were genuine commercial hits.
Where the cracks started The first real signs were the talent departures. Brett Cooper left to start her own thing and built a following that rivals what she had at the company. Owens was fired in 2024 and immediately became one of the Daily Wire’s most prominent competitors. Co-founder and former co-CEO Jeremy Boreing stepped down in March 2025. By the start of 2026, the audience numbers were visibly in decline.
The numbers
Per VidIQ, Shapiro’s YouTube views are down ~70% since December 2024
Other third-party data puts the drop from a late-2023 peak at closer to 85%
His estimated monthly YouTube income has roughly halved year over year
The Daily Wire’s YouTube subscriber base has plateaued or shrunk in 15 of 16 months since the start of 2025
March 2026 website traffic was about half of what it was the year before
Shapiro’s podcast is currently #48 on Spotify; Owens is #16, Carlson #8, Theo Von #5, Rogan #1
The company’s defense Daily Wire spokespeople have run two arguments in parallel. The first is that revenue is down from 2024 but the company is still cash-flow positive and “not going anywhere.” The second, from Shapiro, is that audience flight is the result of other outlets going conspiratorial while the Daily Wire stayed on principle. Shapiro framed it as the rest of conservative media choosing to “clickwhore” by “embracing radical Islam, theorizing about the evils of Winston Churchill, extolling the wonders of Russian supermarkets, and mocking the widow of Charlie Kirk.” His line: “If that’s a strategic business failure, then I guess we can live with that.”
The competing theory Megyn Kelly’s framing is the opposite. She’s argued the conservative base has shifted — particularly on Israel and foreign policy — and Shapiro’s unwavering support for both put him out of step with where the audience actually went. Hosts like Tucker Carlson have absorbed those viewers. Shapiro responded to Kelly’s analysis on X with “Go get them clicks.” Kelly shot back: “Don’t you have a company to save?”
The Pendragon problem Plenty of the internal blame inside the company has landed on Boreing, specifically over the Daily Wire’s most expensive production: The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin, an Arthurian fantasy series for the Daily Wire’s own streaming platform. According to Page Six, production cost roughly $3 million per episode across seven episodes — over $20 million total. The show’s performance has not been publicly disclosed, but Owens claimed on her show that “not even Disney” would have invested at that scale, and that the project “drove the company into the ground financially.” Boreing has defended his record and called the attacks “lies.”
The bigger story What’s happening at the Daily Wire is structurally the same thing that happened at Fox in the years after Trump’s first term. The original outlet that built itself as “alternative media” became successful enough to be the establishment — and then the next generation of talent broke off to disrupt it the same way it had disrupted the legacy media that came before. Kelly and Carlson did that to Fox. Owens and Cooper are doing it to the Daily Wire. The right-wing media landscape is moving faster and more chaotically than its consolidated institutions can adapt to.
Trump weighs in (on a different fight) And not to dilute the point but proving it — on the same day this story was breaking, Donald Trump posted a long Truth Social rant attacking Fox News for letting Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna speak without sufficient pushback from anchor Jacqui Heinrich. He called Khanna a “sleazebag,” Bill Maher “low-rated,” Hakeem Jeffries “very low IQ,” and claimed “MAGA Republicans, who are actually close to 100% of the Party, hate Fox.” Even the most loyal of legacy conservative media isn’t safe.
By the numbers
200M — Daily Wire’s peak annual revenue, per Boreing
13% — Daily Wire’s own claim of 2026 staff cuts so far
20% / ~42 — Puck’s reported figure for the May 1 round
50–60% — Owens’s disputed claim (Daily Wire EIC called this “insane”)
60% — cumulative job losses across 13 months per layoffhedge.com
85% — estimated Shapiro YouTube viewership decline from late-2023 peak
20M+ — total spend on Pendragon (7 episodes × $3M each)
48 — Shapiro’s current Spotify podcast ranking
1 / 5 / 8 / 16 — Spotify rankings of Rogan / Theo Von / Tucker / Owens
The bottom line The exact number of layoffs at the Daily Wire is contested. The trajectory is not. A media empire that was, less than two years ago, one of the most powerful in conservative politics is now visibly shrinking, while the talent it used to pay is dominating the platforms it used to dominate. Whether you find that depressing, funny, or vindicating depends entirely on where you sit. But it’s a real story about who shapes the right’s conversation going forward — and the answer is no longer the people who used to.
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