Donald Trump’s answer to his escalating war with the traditional press got off to a rough start.

The White House launched a new round-the-clock YouTube stream Monday night branded “Trump TV: The Essentials Station.”

At first, thousands tuned in.

Then the audience rapidly shrank.

The stream went live at 7 p.m. Eastern on the existing White House YouTube channel and opened with a speech Trump had delivered at Mount Rushmore nearly three months earlier.

About 20 minutes after launch, roughly 8,500 people were watching simultaneously, according to contemporaneous reporting.

That number did not hold.

Within the next several hours, concurrent viewership fell into the low thousands as the stream cycled through previously recorded Trump speeches and administration events.

By late evening, the audience had dropped dramatically from its launch level.

And overnight, it reportedly fell close to — and at points below — 1,000 concurrent viewers.

Those figures do not represent the total number of people who may eventually watch clips or recordings.

They show how many people were watching the live feed at particular moments.

Still, for a channel launched amid a high-profile confrontation with the largest television networks in America, the early trajectory was striking.

The White House promoted the service as an alternative way for Americans to watch the administration without relying on traditional news organizations.

Deputy Assistant to the President Kaelan Dorr described it as a 24-hour livestream featuring the administration’s “greatest hits, unfiltered.”

The White House framed it as a place where viewers could see major speeches, announcements and highlights directly.

Its debut came at an extraordinary moment.

Just days earlier, Trump had banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House grounds after accusing the organizations of publishing “fiction and lies.”

The outlets said their credentials were revoked because the administration objected to their reporting.

On Monday, all three sued Trump and senior administration officials in federal court, arguing that the ban violated their First Amendment rights and denied them due process.

The media fight then escalated again.

CNN had been scheduled to provide television pool coverage of Trump on Monday.

When the White House prevented CNN from carrying out that assignment, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC jointly suspended their participation in the television pool rather than replace it.

That was a significant development because pooled television coverage is how networks obtain independent video and audio from presidential events where there is not enough room for every news organization to attend.

One network normally operates the camera.

The footage is then distributed to the rest.

With the networks refusing to provide a replacement, some presidential events suddenly lacked the professional television coverage Americans are accustomed to seeing.

The consequences became apparent almost immediately.

At a White House ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new helipad, Trump could be seen speaking while a helicopter roared nearby.

Without the television pool’s normal audio equipment, much of what he said was difficult or impossible to hear in available footage.

Even conservative Newsmax noted on air that the confrontation with the press might be “backfiring just a little bit.”

The White House’s new livestream therefore arrived as more than an ordinary social-media project.

It appeared at the precise moment Trump was losing access to some of the independent camera infrastructure traditionally provided by the major networks.

That gave “Trump TV” immediate symbolic significance.

The administration could now broadcast speeches and events directly to viewers without an outside newsroom deciding what to show, contextualize or question.

But direct distribution comes with a different challenge:

Getting people to watch.

The White House YouTube account already had millions of subscribers when the stream launched.

Yet concurrent viewership represented only a tiny fraction of that potential audience during much of the first night.

Traditional television audiences operate on an entirely different scale.

Major broadcast and cable programs routinely draw hundreds of thousands or millions of viewers, making a few thousand simultaneous viewers relatively modest by comparison.

Still, the comparison is imperfect.

YouTube livestreams, cable ratings and broadcast audiences are measured differently.

People can also watch White House material later, in clips, on social platforms or through other outlets.

So the first-night numbers alone cannot establish whether the project will ultimately succeed or fail.

What they do show is that the initial curiosity surrounding the launch did not translate into a sustained live audience.

The stream’s programming may have played a role.

Rather than beginning with a major new announcement, “Trump TV” initially relied heavily on old material.

Its opening selection was a July 3 Trump speech from Mount Rushmore.

The feed then rotated through other previously recorded appearances and policy addresses.

That made the project look less like a breaking-news channel and more like an always-on archive of favorable administration content.

The White House appears comfortable with that description.

Its goal is explicitly to showcase Trump’s accomplishments and remarks without the interpretation of outside media organizations.

Critics have called the format government propaganda.

The administration describes it as direct communication.

That debate is unfolding alongside a far more consequential legal fight over press access.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico are seeking emergency court relief to regain entry to the White House.

Their case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, who previously ruled against the Trump White House in a press-credential dispute during Trump’s first term.

Meanwhile, the suspension of pool coverage means Trump is entering an important week of international diplomacy without the usual independent TV crew accompanying many of his movements.

He is attending the United Nations General Assembly and is also expected to host Chinese President Xi Jinping.

If the dispute continues, viewers may increasingly depend on White House-provided video for some events.

That could give “Trump TV” more importance than its first-night audience suggests.

But its opening numbers also reveal the limitation of bypassing traditional media.

The White House can build the channel.

It can choose every speech.

It can control every clip.

It can broadcast 24 hours a day.

What it cannot guarantee is that people will tune in.

And on its first night, thousands apparently decided not to stick around.