In 2021, Mike Richards lasted one episode as the new host of Jeopardy! — following about a year as executive producer behind the scenes — before old podcast comments ended his tenure in a very public fireball.

Four years later, he is the CEO of The Daily Wire.

When we speak by phone less than 24 hours after The Daily Wire announcement, Richards, 50, sounds relaxed, energetic and eager to discuss growth, subscriptions, investigative journalism and what he repeatedly describes as “the audience.” The conversation occasionally drifts into culture war territory, but it mostly sounds like a veteran TV exec explaining programming strategy after a corporate restructuring — which is pretty much what this is.

Founded in 2015 by Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing, The Daily Wire has spent the last decade evolving from a conservative commentary site into something much bigger and harder to pin down: a self-contained ecosystem attempting to rival mainstream media companies while openly rejecting many of their norms.

It has launched movies, children’s programming, documentaries, podcasts, investigative reporting and subscription streaming. In recent months, however, the company has weathered layoffs, internal turbulence and increasingly public ideological fractures on the American right — particularly around Shapiro, its biggest star by far, and his ongoing support of Israel through the war in Gaza, and now in Iran.

Richards now inherits all of it. Officially, he succeeds Caleb Robinson, who announced this week — to Richards’ surprise, it turns out — that he was stepping down as CEO after 11 years to focus on other projects while remaining on the board. Boreing, who co-founded the company alongside Shapiro and spearheaded pricey, ambitious projects like its Pendragon Cycle TV series — which the company admits was a dud with audiences — departed his own executive role more than a year ago.

Before his fall at Jeopardy!, Richards was one of the most successful producers in unscripted television, with credits spanning The Price Is Right, Let’s Make a Deal and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.

Throughout our conversation, Richards seems aware of the symbolic weight of that comeback without ever explicitly saying so. He repeatedly frames himself as an “audience-first” producer who respects viewers in ways Hollywood no longer does. He speaks admiringly of Nashville, where he relocated with his family, describing it as “how I remember L.A. when I was a kid.” He insists he has no desire to become on-camera talent again, though he remains intensely performative, delivering polished riffs about producing, ratings and game mechanics with the ease of someone who has spent a lifetime understanding how entertainment works.

Most strikingly, he sounds less like a culture warrior than a network executive who has discovered a new constituency.

There are also reveals. Richards confirms that Jonathan Majors is starring in a sequel to The Daily Wire’s 2021 action film Run Hide Fight. Richards calls the sequel “a love letter to the Daily Wire faithful” and describes it as “a Red Dawn on a college campus situation.” In other words: the exile economy has officially become a business model.

Below, Richards discusses with The Hollywood Reporter his rise to CEO, the future of The Daily Wire amid layoffs and Shapiro in the crosshairs, Jonathan Majors remake as a conservative action hero — and his thoughts on how Jeopardy! is faring without him.

You mentioned the word “unexpected” about this succession. So no one saw Caleb Robinson’s resignation coming?

Not anyone in the building. Caleb had been working with the board for a month and talking about how things would go and what that would look like. A lot of it was him wanting to make sure we had a great management team in place. He felt very confident in me and our CFO and our CMO and the rest of the management team. I didn’t know that’s where he was heading, but it had been in process for some time, I was told.

Did he say why?

Yes. He has been doing this for 11 years. It is a stressful job. It is a 24-hour-a-day job. He has many, many children and he wanted to spend time with them. He’s still on the board. He still owns a huge chunk of the company. He’s still going to be very active. A lot of people say that when they step down and then it’s like, “See you never.” I was actually texting him this morning about something we’re working on. He is just taking a less stressful version of what he was doing.

You’ve been there about 19 months now. What have you actually been doing?

I’ve been president of entertainment during that time. I think a lot of people thought I was going to be very Hollywood-focused — competition game shows, stuff like that. Really what I focused on, right from the start, was the audience. I am an audience-first person. It’s why I’ve been successful running some of the largest franchises in television. It goes all the way back: I produced the fifth-grade talent show, even though I didn’t know what producing was, which meant I put the acts in the right order. Super exciting one at the beginning, long boring one next, quick changeover after that. My fifth-grade teacher has since reminded me that’s what I did.

And The Daily Wire audience — how do you view them? What makes them different from a network audience?

I actually love our Daily Wire audience. I respect them. They’re smart. They over-index in almost every positive category. I’ve never felt like I was better than them, which I think a lot of producers make that mistake. The focus over the last year has been on making content that gets right back to the core of what they want. When The Daily Wire is doing and saying things that no one else would — that’s when our audience reacts. That’s when we’re actually changing the country.

So what does that look like in practice?

Real History with Matt Walsh is a perfect example — us doing and saying things no one else would do. We made it as a subscription show and it’s driven tons of subscriptions. We put a couple episodes on YouTube and each one has gotten millions of views, each one improving on the last. We’ve also signed two new talents: Isabel Brown, who’s Gen Z and super smart, and Matt Fradd, a Catholic apologist who has doubled his audience since we brought him on.

What about Pendragon Cycle? That was the big bet on Hollywood-caliber scripted entertainment. I’m assuming you lost money on it and won’t be doing that anymore.

Pendragon is us at our most audacious. I wasn’t here when it was produced or green-lit, but it is us going all in on entertainment. I think it’s undebatably a good show. The guys at Angel Studios said it’s the most audacious independent TV project ever made. I agree. It did not land with our audience at the level we had hoped. It’s still on the platform, still drives subs. But it represents something we can be proud of and something we can learn from: Let’s make sure what we do going forward is even more missional and really lands with our audience.

What about movies?

We are in the movie business in a big way. We are expanding the Run Hide Fight universe with Run Hide Fight 2. It’s a big-time action movie — put a smile on your face, blowing things up, you know who the good guys are, you know who the bad guys are. Jonathan Majors is the star. He’s back to being badass like he should be. [Director] Dallas Sonnier is doing Dallas stuff, making crazy movies and blowing things up. When you see it, you’ll understand why only The Daily Wire could have made it. It’s like Red Dawn on a college campus. I even think there are some people on the left who will begrudgingly love it, because it’s that good.

Jonathan suffered a fall on set. How’s he doing?

He fell four inches out of a window — that is true — and he yelled, “We’re going to use that take, right?”

Let’s talk about Ben. He’s been under a lot of heat. What can you tell me about what’s actually happening with his audience?

He’s up 7 percent year-over-year across all platforms. All the reporting, all the sniping: as someone who lives in the numbers because it’s my job, we don’t even understand it. Some of the numbers are not as public as other numbers. When I’m looking at the numbers, I’m looking at how many people are listening on our own platform. It’s a big number. I’m looking at Spotify, Spotify video, RSS, and YouTube. The per-episode numbers are right where they have been.

Is it what it was in 2024? The most consequential, circus election in the history of the world, never to be repeated again, I hope? No. But across all platforms, which is what our business model is. That’s what makes us unique and so badass — we don’t just have to click-farm to succeed. He can drive hundreds of thousands of subscribers to our platform.

I’ll give you an example. He did a really good, pretty aggressive monologue last Friday — vintage Ben, I felt like. It doubled our daily subscriptions that day and sold lifetime memberships — which are expensive — without any call to action.

And 6 million views on X.

What do you make of the shift toward what Shapiro calls the “woke Right” — the Carlson-Owens-Fuentes axis leaning into antisemitism and conspiracy theories? Is it moving your audience?

I don’t think our audience is necessarily shifting away. There are certain people who are going to go with different conspiracy theories and different ideas about what conservatism should be. The key to The Daily Wire as an institution is that we are consistent with what we believe conservatism is. Even if it costs us audience, we’re going to stay consistent — because in the end, people will come right back around and go, “Oh wait, they really are conservative. They didn’t just chase clicks.”

It’s also important to point out that it’s not just Ben’s voice. We’ve got 12 shows here and everyone has different opinions. That is the great part about this place. We have debates in the kitchen at lunch and then we all get along afterwards. The way this has gone with other people is they’ve made it much more personal and aggressive and it’s unnecessary.

But a lot of that drifting audience has specific issues with Ben’s views on Israel and Iran. Is that his position or The Daily Wire’s?

A lot of what audience? Our audience can agree with Ben on some things and disagree with him on others. Our hosts all have different views — we have a big tent. Conservatism has always had a big tent. I’ve been in media for a long time, and conservatives have always had pretty vehement disagreements on many things. Ben has disagreed with the Trump administration and agreed with them, and I think that’s what people want from him.

Let’s address the layoffs directly. Candace Owens said 50 percent, then revised it upward to 60. What was the actual number?

She was doing that new math, which is why we really have to fix the public school system. The number was 13 percent — which is just under the 65 percent that was reported.

Listen, layoffs are always bad. Those are some of my friends, people I love working with. But we had been expanding heavily in editorial and adding new talent, so we needed to reallocate. Three years ago there were eight or nine shows shooting almost daily in our studio. Most of our hosts now shoot remotely. Matt Walsh is at an undisclosed location. Isabel Brown is in D.C. Andrew Klavan is in D.C. Ben is in Florida. A lot of the staff we unfortunately lost was from production, because we simply don’t shoot as many shows here [in our Nashville headquarters]. We’ve launched a new daily news show, Wired In Live, that shoots here, and we have Michael Knowles here, and that’s it. The contraction was us refocusing on the things we know we need to do to be the preeminent new media institution in the country.

You’re still hiring, though?

We will add where we need to add. We’ve expanded our social team from three people to 14. We’ve got another major talent about to front premium content — a big, big name, and I think an unexpected name — and we’ve signed a new person in the conservative universe who will start in 2027. We are not shrinking away. We are expanding.

You relocated to Nashville for the job?

I did. It is how I remember L.A. when I was a kid — people were nice, they waved to you, there were flags in the front yard, you knew your neighbor’s name. My kids are in incredible schools with shared values. We’re not weird because we go to church on Sunday. One of the bestselling things we’ve ever put out was a shirt that said “Make America Tennessee Again.” And honestly, I get it now. Nashville’s a great town, lots to do, friendly people. And even in the schools, there are conservatives and liberals and all different kinds of people, and they actually facilitate political debates — everybody gets a word, no one gets canceled. I think that’s kind of what Nashville is and what Tennessee is, and I think it’s a good thing.

In the CEO announcement, The Daily Wire called you a “canceled genius.” Do you accept either of those words?

Genius is an overstatement — I’ll take “works really hard.” Canceled — I think it depends on how you take it. I take it as opportunity. Through great adversity comes great opportunity. I went through some pretty heavy adversity that I believe is very, very unfair. But I never lost my belief in what I can do and who I am. And luckily my friends and coworkers didn’t either. That’s why I get to still do what I set out to do from fifth grade. I love making content and always have.

How do you think it all shook out at Jeopardy! — with the host situation, in the end?

I actually root for success for people, including that team. They know it — some of the writers, some of the other people have texted me privately. I root for them completely. I think it’s worked out great. I haven’t checked the ratings, but I’m sure it’s great and I hope that show goes on forever.

Why wouldn’t you do some kind of trivia or game show at The Daily Wire? What’s holding you back?

It’s got to be the right thing for our audience. I’m pretty hard on game concepts — I’ve done it at the highest level and I understand what actually works in a game show at a level that not too many other people do. If I find the right thing, I will. But I’d point out there hasn’t been a game show launched in the last 15 years that’s worked, because the game mechanisms are broken and the audience doesn’t want to play along with certain things. Only the legacy games have worked, other than The Floor, which I think is a cool show. Rob Lowe is really good-looking and an amazing talent. Put that together and it’s going to work. I feel like just about anything he goes into is worth seeing.

Would you ever want to become on-camera talent at The Daily Wire yourself?

I’m not interested in being on camera. To be honest, I wasn’t interested in it before, either. Early in my career it was something I was able to do at a very high level — I did pursue it — but I was always producing. Sometimes making the content meant I had to go in front of it to make it work, and I’ve done that. But that’s not one of my goals here. I love making the content. I don’t need to be the face of it.