Fox News Slump Spurs Desperation

Fox News appears to be caught in a downward spiral from which there is no relief. Ratings just released comparing January 2007 with January 2006, have more bad news for the “Only Cable News Channel That Does Not Bring You The Usual Left Wing Bias.”

Jan. #’s: Total Viewers vs. Jan. 2006:

Total day: FNC CNN MSNBC HLN CNBC
Jan. 07: 874 521 332 234 225
Jan.’06: 898 460 238 234 138
% change: -3% +13% +39 0% +63
Primetime: FNC CNN MSNBC HLN CNBC
Jan. ’07: 1,605 809 530 343 290
Jan. ’06: 1,483 724 349 343 155
% change: +8% +12 +52% 0% +87%

Jan. #’s: 25-54 Demo vs. Jan. 2006:

Total day: FNC CNN MSNBC HLN CNBC
Jan. 07: 262 186 138 98 95
Jan. ’06: 235 145 91 96 45
% change: +11% +28% +52% +2% +111%
Primetime: FNC CNN MSNBC HLN CNBC
Jan. ’07: 389 260 217 139 121
Jan. ’06: 319 202 150 114 76
% change: +22% +29% +45% +22% +59%

In Total Viewers, Fox is, again, the only network that posted a decline. Where they showed increases, they were second only to Headline News for the smallest gain. For some perspective, it must be remembered that comparisons for Fox are much easier because they had already declined so much. Therefore, it doesn’t take much of a boost to register higher percentages. Conversely, the performance of CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC, deserve respect for achieving substantial gains even in comparison to numbers that were already improving a year ago.

Fox will undoubtedly spin the these numbers as positive in their press releases. But their behavior toward insiders is much more revealing. They recently published this trade ad slamming Anderson Cooper:

“Meet the Paris Hilton of Television News”


What the ad neglects to mention is that CNN, prior to Cooper’s tenure, was trailing Fox by 174% in the time slot. Now CNN is only behind 18%. That’s a considerable distance to make up. Fox also forgot to point out that they tried to hire Cooper a few years ago. Charlie Reina, the former Fox producer who tells the story about Fox courting Cooper, makes the astute (and hilarious) observation that:

“for Cooper, whose talents and instincts were in actual news, coming to Fox would be a huge step down professionally.”

And Reina knows what he’s talking about. It’s reminiscent of NBC’s David Shuster, another Fox alum, who said after ankling:

“…there wasn’t a tradition or track record of honoring journalistic integrity. I found some reporters at Fox would cut corners or steal information from other sources or in some cases, just make things up. Management would either look the other way or just wouldn’t care to take a closer look.”

Is it any surprise that Fox would cheerfully devour and regurgitate unverified reports, from disreputable and anonymous sources, about Barack Obama’s childhood schooling? And is it any surprise that the American people are increasingly repelled by this brand of tabloid propagandizing?

LATE BREAKING: O’Reilly did a piece on Katie Couric this evening, saying…

“When you get a 10.5 debut and you’re down to to 7.5 in six months, that’s not going in the right direction.”

He didn’t bother to admit that his own ratings have declined even more on a percentage basis (30%). One of his guests tried to slip it in, but he just plowed through it.

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