Trump’s MAGA RNC Convention Suffers Sharp Ratings Decline From Prior Years and Biden Speech

Posted by Mark NC on July 17, 2024 at 1:21 pm. 2 Comments :

The Republican National Convention launched this week and immediately rocketed into the hearts of the America people with such MAGA luminaries as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, puppy killing South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, model and reality TV personality Amber Rose, White nationalist whisperer Charlie Kirk, and, of course, Dear Leader himself, Donald Trump.

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The popularity of the GOP roster was promoted as a blockbuster lineup that threatened to break all records for television viewing as the Trump Train chugged into the nation’s homes via the media that it regards as the “enemy of the people.” Never mind that Trump is among the most despised political figures in decades who voters find repulsive for both his policies and his personality.

SEE THIS: Nearly 70% are More Worried About a President Who is a Liar than One Who is Old – Trump is Both

The ratings for the first day of the Convention are out, and they reflect just how deplorable he is held by the American people. As reported by Variety…

“The first telecasts of the Republican National Convention on Monday drew in 18.1 million viewers across networks, per Nielsen.

“That total, measured during the 10 p.m. ET hour, accounts for 12 broadcasters and cablers: ABC, CBS, NBC, Scripps News, Telemundo, CNN, Fox Business, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, Newsmax, NewsNation and PBS, with Nielsen noting that Telemundo only aired 9 minutes of RNC coverage.

“Fox News led the pack by far with 6.9 million viewers at 10 p.m. Next was ABC with 2.3 million viewers, NBC with 2.2 million, CBS with 1.8 million, MSNBC with 1.3 million and CNN with 1.1 million.”

It should come as no surprise that Fox News – Trump’s Ministry of Propaganda – would deliver the lion’s share of the convention audience. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation that watches more credible news sources got comparatively little exposure to the RNC’s unreality show. So Trump had sparse opportunity to spread his message to anyone but the already indoctrinated members of the MAGA cult. And Fox News benefited from the broadcast, despite Trump’s own vacillating opinion of the ultra-rightist outlet.

MORE HERE: TRUMP IS RIGHT! In a Mad Rage, Felon of Foy Declares that ‘Nobody Can Ever Trust Fox News’

It is notable that the 18 million viewers that watched the affair on Monday is considerably less than the 23 million that tuned into the RNC’s convention in 2016. And it is also only slightly more than than the 17 million who watched in 2020, even though that convention was largely scrapped due to COVID. Furthermore, this feeble showing occurred despite newsworthy highlights including Trump naming his vice-presidential running mate, and this being his first public appearance since the “Earlobe Stigmata” he received at his Pennsylvania rally.

What may be most painful for Trump is that the ratings for his convention so far are also far less than the 24 million viewers that President Biden drew for his post-NATO press conference just last week. So it’s another defeat for Trump at the hands of “Sleepy Joe.” It won’t be long before Trump whines that the Nielsen ratings are “rigged” and the whole thing is a “hoax” and/or a “witch hunt” aimed at “stealing” his victory.

THIS JUST IN: The RNC’s ratings for the second night also declined from 2016 and 2020. This year the Trump gala drew only 14.8 million viewers, compared to 19 million for each of the prior two conventions.

UPDATE: Trump’s acceptance speech also bombs in the ratings and in the reviews.

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MSNBC Trouncing Fox News Post-Trump Indictment is a Preview of Democrats vs Republicans in 2024

Posted by Mark NC on June 15, 2023 at 1:33 pm. 3 Comments :

In what was perhaps the biggest news story of 2023 so far, Donald Trump was indicted in Miami on 37 felony counts ranging from obstruction of justice to violations of the Espionage Act. It is the first time that a president or former president has been charged and arrested for federal crimes, and most of the media turned out to report on this historic event.

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Fox News, however, covered Trump’s indictment predictably, managing to twist the news into an attack on President Biden with a chyron reading “WANNABE DICTATOR SPEAKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HAVING HIS POLITICAL RIVAL ARRESTED.” It’s that sort of bias and political hostility that affirms Fox’s place in the mediaverse as a propaganda outlet that regurgitates right-wing lies and takes its cues from their Dear Leader Trump.

The foundations of Fox News have lately been on the decline. For the first time in more than two years they lost their Nielsen ratings leadership. The week of June 5 was won by their arch nemesis, MSNBC. According to Mediaiate…

“MSNBC beat Fox News last week in prime time in both total viewers and in the key 25-54 age demographic, ending a 120-week winning streak for Fox in prime time. […] MSNBC averaged 1.52 million total viewers across prime time, from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., and 172,000 demo viewers, which was enough to beat Fox’s 1.5 million total average viewers and 139,000 demo viewers. CNN landed in third place with 677,000 total average prime time viewers and 131,000 demo viewers.”

What’s more, on Tuesday, during the hour that Trump’s indictment took place, Fox News came in third behind CNN and MSNBC, which drew almost twice as many viewers as Fox. As reported in CNN’s newsletter…

“During the 3pm hour, when Trump was taken into custody and pled not guilty, CNN averaged 1.6 million total viewers, with 287k in the demo and MSNBC averaged 2.3 million viewers, with 311k in the demo. On right-wing talk TV, Fox News averaged 1.7 million total viewers, with 179k in the demo.”

This bad news for Fox is not due solely to Trump being brought up on charges for crimes against America. Actually, Fox viewers regard that favorably as proof that he is the victim of a cabal of nefarious “Deep State” operatives. The Trump crowd is naturally drawn to liars and criminals. But despite that, much of the Fox News audience has abandoned the network for having terminated Tucker Carlson. They have now embraced the delusional notion that Fox News is collaborating with ultra-liberals bent on destroying the MAGA movement.

What this tells us, though, is relevant to the upcoming elections in 2024. MSNBC’s good fortunes reveal that progressives and Democrats have been energized by events in the news and the political successes by their representatives in Washington. So they are paying close attention on the network that is most aligned with their views.

On the other hand, Republicans and Trump cultists are despondent and can’t handle the flurry of foreboding affairs that are dragging down their party and its leader. So they are tuning out in massive numbers. That’s a condition that is likely to be repeated in November of 2024 as Republicans choose to stay home rather than wallow in ignominious defeat. And Fox News isn’t wasting any time invalidating the results of the next presidential race.

SEE THIS: Anticipating Failure? Fox News is Already Gaslighting About Imaginary Election Fraud in 2024

In the meantime, the GOP is desperately trying to manufacture scandals of their own. The Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, went on Fox News to whine about “the liberal media like MSNBC with their a low IQ audience.” Look who’s talking. And they are asserting preposterous allegations against Biden that have no basis in reality.

James Comer on Maria Bartiromo's show says MSNBC has "a low IQ audience" pic.twitter.com/e7qDqsy4N2

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 15, 2023

To top matters off, Trump is scheduled to be interviewed on Fox News by Bret Baier on June 19. It will be interesting to see if Baier asks any legitimate questions about Trump’s indictments or, more importantly, the underlying crimes that comprise them. And if Trump gives his routine deflections and lies in response, will Baier ask appropriate follow-ups? In the hopes of preventing any tragic asphyxiations, please do not hold your breath waiting for any of that.

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Fox News Sends Tucker Carlson a Letter to Cease and Desist From His Twitter Rant-Cast

Posted by Mark NC on June 12, 2023 at 1:19 pm. 4 Comments :

The feud between Fox News and their former top host, Tucker Carlson, has been growing rapidly more intense and bitter. It’s been seven weeks since Carlson was unceremoniously banished without notice from his Fox News perch. In the interim both have suffered significant declines in audience, as well as reputation, which was already in the gutter.

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Carlson has sought to resurface by posting poorly produced, ten minute tirades on Twitter. They have been nothing more than the sort of factless, right-wing monologues, riddled with conspiracy theories, that he used to open his program on Fox News with. Shortly after his first Twitter episode, Fox News advised him that he was in breach of his contract’s non-compete clause. Although it’s a stretch to regard what Carlson is putting out now as “competition,” given its sub-standard production values and tedious content.

Fox News has now taken the next step to send Carlson a “cease and desist“ letter. Since Carlson is still being paid by Fox, this notice is an official signal that they will file a lawsuit to get Carlson to either stop posting his videos, or lose the millions of dollars that remain in his contract, as well as additional compensatory and punitive damages. In response Carlson has apparently dismissed Fox’s warning and continued to post new material on Twitter. His attorney issued the following statement…

“Fox News continues to ignore the interests of its viewers, not to mention its shareholder obligations. Doubling down on the most catastrophic programming decision in the history of the cable news industry, Fox is now demanding that Tucker Carlson be silent until after the 2024 election. Tucker will not be silenced by anyone — whether it be Media Matters, the ADL or Fox News.”

It’s awfully thoughtful of Carlson to be concerned with the interests of Fox’s viewers and shareholders. However, that isn’t a rational legal argument for him to continue breaching his contract. It’s also cute that he regards his cancelation as “the most catastrophic programming decision in the history of the cable news.” Considering the fact that Carlson’s irresponsible lies contributed to Fox News having to shell out nearly a billion dollars to Dominion Voting Systems for defamation, canceling Carlson was a prudent decision that that should have made years sooner.

Carlson believes that his Twitter show is outperforming his old program on Fox. He boasts about the number of “views” his video has racked up. However, like pretty much everything else that he says, he is deliberately misleading his fans and the media. Views on Twitter are not comparable to viewers on television. Aidan McLaughlin, the Editor in Chief of Mediaite, provided an enlightening analysis of how those metrics are starkly different…

“According to Twitter, if you watch a video for two seconds, with only half the video player in-view, you count as one video view. The tweet view metric is even less valuable. It merely counts how many people viewed the tweet, so if you scrolled past Carlson’s video on Twitter, you counted as one of the 114 million. […] If you scrolled past the tweet multiple times, you counted more than once.”

So Carlson contends that nobody, not even Fox News, will be able to silence him. Which sounds more like a threat than a boast. But his public exposure has severely declined since becoming just another Tweeter with attitude. The only consolation for him is that his absence from Fox has hurt them just as much as it has hurt him. Fox’s primetime ratings have been cut in half since Tuckers termination. The good news is that America benefits from the decline and fall of both of them. So let the war continue, and best of luck to both sides.

SEE THIS: With Lawsuits, Lost Hosts, and Lying Pundits, the Future of Fox News Has Never Been Weaker

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Fox News Weighs in with a Typically Tunnel-Blind Take on the Firing of CNN Boss Chris Licht

Posted by Mark NC on June 7, 2023 at 12:58 pm. 1 Comments :

The head of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, dropped a highly anticipated bomb on the media world Wednesday morning with the announcement that the troubled CNN boss, Chris Licht, had been terminated effective immediately. Zaslav informed his staff and the company via an internal memo that was mostly complimentary toward Licht, but conceded the obvious that “It didn’t work out.”

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Licht appeared to make the wrong moves at every juncture of his brief tenure. He began by promising to make CNN “more Republican friendly,” as if that were an appropriate journalistic goal. He sought to “balance” the truth with blatant lies and conspiracy theories. He clearly envied the ratings of Fox News and delusionally believed that he could emulate them. But why would any Fox viewer tune into CNN, the network they were indoctrinated to hate, when they still have Fox?

Licht’s changes only served to prove how poorly he understood the news business. He canceled the popular program, Reliable Sources, one of the only regularly scheduled media analysis programs on television news. And he fired its host, Brian Stelter. Then he moved Don Lemon to a morning show with Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins. Shortly thereafter he fired Lemon.

Perhaps the most brain-dead move by Licht was to tap Donald Trump for a town hall, moderated by Collins, that allowed Trump to lie almost uninterrupted for an hour and a half. Licht packed the audience with Trump supporters, and prohibited any displays of disapproval. It was so badly planned and executed that even CNN insiders were openly appalled.

SEE THIS: How Horrible Was CNN’s Lie-Riddled Trump Town Hall? Let’s See What CNN Has to Say About It

Following the Trump debacle, Licht promoted Collins, a former correspondent for Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller, to a primetime spot. And through all of this Licht also managed to alienate CNN personnel in front of, and behind, the camera. An extensive article documenting his failures was published with his cooperation by The Atlantic.

Several of Licht’s hand-picked lieutenants were also pink-slipped. But don’t expect much to change at CNN with Licht’s departure. Zaslav is still the corporate head, and right-wingers like John Malone are packed on the company’s board of directors. However, now that Licht is officially gone, his transient reign is being scrutinized by his former colleagues across the mediaverse. And not to be left out, Fox News weighed in with a gleeful obituary that was astonishing for its utter absence of self-awareness. Fox’s media hack, Joe Concha, celebrated the suffering of their competitor saying that…

“It was an internal coup led by on-air talent at the network, even its own media team, that ultimately brought him down. And why? Because many could not accept that Licht was attempting to move the network from being seen by conservatives and many independents as an activist news network, a resistance news network aimed at disparaging, through provocative and personal opinion, those right or right of center and thereby destroying the decent credibility it once had. And remember, he had inherited a network that lost 75% of its audience when you’re comparing early 2021 with the spring of 2022 when he came in. And new leadership there gave him marching orders saying basically, move this network back to the center.”

So Concha believes that Licht was fired because others at CNN “could not accept” his determination to turn CNN into “Fox Lite.” While there were surely those who opposed that boneheaded editorial detour, Licht’s fall from grace was more the result of his failure to advance CNN’s place in the cable news race. CNN’s already declining ratings just got worse as Licht implemented his plans.

Concha correctly noted that CNN’s ratings were awful. However, what he missed was that nearly every criticism he lobbed at CNN could have been aimed at Fox News itself. Concha specifically referred to what he thought CNN needed: “Less provocative reporting. More solid reporting. More Republicans on the air.” That’s coming from the media analyst at Fox News where they have virtually nothing but provocative “reporting” and Republicans on the air. He went on to note what he called “the audacity of hosting Donald Trump.” Which, by the way, Fox News is doing a week from Monday.

Concha also missed that Fox News has suffered a ratings collapse similar to that of CNN’s. It has lost fully 50% of its audience since they fired Tucker Carlson. And that’s on top of a 34% drop going back in 2021.

Consequently, if Concha’s analysis were to be taken seriously, Fox News should fire their brass, Suzanne Scott and/or Lachlan Murdoch. But don’t hold your breath waiting for that. While Concha thinks that CNN was failing because they had not moved “back to the center,” he’s perfectly happy to see Fox News stuck at the far right. Never mind that Fox News is languishing at lows it hasn’t seen in years. It’s losing to MSNBC. And its prospects for the future don’t look any better. But sure, focus on CNN’s problems instead of acknowledging how horrible things are at Fox, Joe.

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FAILING UP: CNN Boss Chris Licht Promotes Trump Town Hall Host, Kaitlan Collins, to Primetime

Posted by Mark NC on May 17, 2023 at 12:50 pm. 5 Comments :

Last week CNN aired a town hall with Donald Trump, the twice-impeached leader of a seditionist conspiracy who was recently found liable for rape and defamation, and is currently being investigated for a multitude of crimes, including financial and tax fraud, hush money payments, hoarding classified materials, election interference, and plotting a violent coup.

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The town hall was broadly disparaged as an infomercial for Trump’s aspirations to return to the White House in 2024. He was given wide latitude to lie, with only paltry pushback by the moderator, Kaitlan Collins. The audience was stacked with Trump supporters who applauded his most heinous remarks and laughed when he insulted the victim of his sexual assault. The program was so awful that many insiders at CNN were among the harshest critics…

SEE THIS: How Horrible Was CNN’s Lie-Riddled Trump Town Hall? Let’s See What CNN Has to Say About It

In the days following the town hall, CNN’s ratings plummeted to fourth place, below the ultra-rightist gadfly network, Newsmax. So naturally, this week CNN is rewarding Collins for her hosting of the debacle with a new primetime show:

“On the heels of her performance moderating a town hall with former President Donald Trump, CNN CEO Chris Licht named Kaitlan Collins the new host of the network’s 9 p.m. hour starting in June.”

This schedule change was actually rumored to be in the works prior to the town hall, which was to serve as both an introduction and an advertisement for Collins in her new role. Which, in retrospect, doesn’t seem like it was a very good idea.

CNN appears to be making good on the journalistically inappropriate promise of its CEO, Chris Licht, to make the network “more Republican friendly.” They are replacing the more left-leaning journalist, Don Lemon, with Collins, a former correspondent with the Tucker Carlson founded “Daily Caller.” Never mind that Collins’ primetime debut has garnered mostly criticism and ridicule. One of the few people to praise the show was Trump himself (of course), who credited it with moving Fox News more to the right.

REALTED: Ratings Envy? Trump Says that His CNN Town Hall Spurred Fox News to Cover His Iowa Cult Rally

Perhaps Licht thinks that he can scoop up the disaffected Fox News viewers who are rapidly abandoning the network for having fired their High Priest of White Nationalism, Tucker Carlson. If so, then Licht is even dumber than Carlson looks. Fox’s audience has been trained to despise CNN, and they won’t be de-programmed by a one-night special broadcast.

As for Fox News, they are implementing some program changes as well. They just announced that Sean Hannity will be moved into Carlson’s earlier timeslot. And insiders are saying that Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld are also going to be given shows in primetime.

This presents a dilemma for Fox. There aren’t enough hours in primetime for everyone currently being talked about to have a show there. Since Hannity isn’t going anywhere, if Watters and Gutfeld get promoted, then Laura Ingraham is either fired or moved out of primetime.

All of these changes are going to inject some chaos into the cable news wars. CNN is driving viewers away by sucking up to the right. Fox News is alienating their followers by terminating their heroes. And all of that is going to create opportunities for MSNBC, whose schedule is remaining relatively stable.

It may take several weeks for all of this to shake out. But if CNN and Fox News continue to battle it out for the wingnut demographic, they will both continue to lose audience share to MSNBC and the various incarnations of “Bachelors” and “Idols” that are being served up on the broadcast networks. Stay tuned.

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Ratings Envy? Trump Says that His CNN Town Hall Spurred Fox News to Cover His Iowa Cult Rally

Posted by Mark NC on May 13, 2023 at 12:32 pm. 5 Comments :

The fallout from CNN’s ill-conceived and dreadfully executed town hall with Donald Trump last week is continuing to drench the network in criticism and shame. Rather than producing an informative forum for assessing Trump, it has been widely disparaged as an in-kind contribution to Trump’s campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination for president.

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There is a growing consensus among media professionals that it was foreseeable mistake for CNN to provide Trump with a platform to spread the same tedious lies he has been promulgating for years about the 2020 presidential election that he says – without a shred of evidence – was “rigged and stolen” from him. And on pretty much every other topic Trump regurgitated his familiar distortions of reality, personal insults, and meritless self-aggrandizement. It was so awful that some of the harshest condemnations came from CNN insiders.

SEE THIS: How Horrible Was CNN’s Lie-Riddled Trump Town Hall? Let’s See What CNN Has to Say About It

Another indicator of how badly CNN misjudged this event was the elation it produced in Trump and his allies in right-wing propaganda. They were bursting with joy at what they considered to be a PR triumph for Trump. And Saturday morning Trump bragged, in a post on his floundering Twitter scam, Truth Social, that the CNN debacle had led to a major media victory for him…

“FoxNews called to inform us that they will be airing the entire Iowa Rally tonight. They saw the record numbers done on CNN and want in on the action. Also, just out, I am leading DeSanctimonious by almost 30 points in FLORIDA, and leading Crooked Joe Biden BIG! See you later in Iowa.”

First of all, CNN’s numbers were hardly records. They drew about three million viewers, which is not uncommon for special news events on CNN. And while their ratings may have spiked during the town hall, they returned to their prior low standings immediately after the program was over. Still, CNN management was so tunnel-blind that they reprimanded their media correspondent, Oliver Darcy, for being “too emotional” in his accurate reporting of the town hall criticism.

Typical of Trump’s disloyalty and short attention span, just an hour after posting his delight that Fox News would offer live coverage of his Iowa rally, he posted another comment telling his cult followers to watch it on Newsmax instead.

That may be for the best since Trump’s assertion that Fox would carry it has conspicuously not been confirmed by Fox News. This, of course, wouldn’t be the first time that Trump lied about something. According to Newsweek…

“Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday morning that Fox News informed him that the network will air the entire rally, however Fox News didn’t respond to Newsweek’s request on Saturday morning for confirmation that it would broadcast the event.”

What’s more, Fox News has not bothered to promote this alleged rally coverage of Trump’s Iowa affair. However, Fox News has been hyping their live coverage of both an event with Ron DeSantis (who coincidentally will be in Iowa on the same day as Trump), and a speech by President Biden at Howard University. So the absence of any notice of Trump’s rally is, to say the least, curious.

It is still possible, of course, that Fox News will air Trump’s rally, despite the fact that haven’t been doing so for several years now. That’s because they have been been rapidly losing viewers since the disclosures of their blatant lying revealed in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit. And even worse, Fox’s firing of their MAGA, white nationalist heartthrob, Tucker Carlson, has accelerated their ratings disaster. So they may be in a state of desperation and panic.

Finally, because Trump is incapable of making any statements that contain only a single lie, he also noted in his posting that he is “leading Crooked Joe Biden BIG!” For the record, Biden is beating Trump in most recent general election polls. But if he wants to deceive his followers into believing that he’s running ahead of Biden, let’s let him do so, and they can have a big surprise come election day.

UPDATE: Due to a tornado watch being in effect, Trump has canceled his rally. Apparently god is “woke.”

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With Lawsuits, Lost Hosts, and Lying Pundits, the Future of Fox News Has Never Been Weaker

Posted by Mark NC on April 28, 2023 at 1:42 pm. 2 Comments :

For the past week the biggest story in media has been the firing of Tucker Carlson by Fox News. While that was indeed a newsworthy event, there are collateral consequences that are being ignored that will eventually have an even more profound impact on both politics and media.

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Carlson fans are actually celebrating his expulsion from Fox News and insisting that it will only make him more influential and powerful as an advocate for the neo-fascist agenda for which he has been the mainstream media’s most prominent spokesman. They foolishly believe that the number of times his post-termination video was viewed on Twitter is proof that he, as an individual, has greater clout than Rupert Murdoch’s multibillion dollar media conglomerate. But they might want to check with Murdoch before popping those champagne corks.

In the real world, Carlson can look forward to precisely the same political celebrity status that Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck have achieved since they were fired by Fox News (i.e. pathetic has-beens). There is a long trail of road kill lining the highway of sacked media stars.

However, the future doesn’t look any better for Fox News. They will surely survive the loss of a loser like Carlson, just as they did O’Reilly and Beck. In fact, they will probably find a replacement who surpasses Carlson’s capacity for crackpot conservatism. But that doesn’t mean that Fox News will have a clear path ahead.

In addition to the Carlson conundrum, Fox News also was just forced to pay 3/4 of a billion dollars to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Another voting technology company, Smartmatic, is next in line with a similar lawsuit. That case is already shaping up as a major problem for Fox News.

SEE THIS: Judge in Smartmatic Defamation Lawsuit Orders Fox News to Turn Over ‘Missing’ Documents

What’s more, all of these ill winds for Fox are blowing while they are in negotiations to renew their cable carriage contracts. They presently receive one of the highest carriage fees in the business. But are cable companies going to be anxious to continue paying a premium for a network that is firing their top rated hosts, being sued for defamation, getting exposed as liars, and having to spend their money on court settlements rather than programming.

Furthermore, Fox’s ratings have suffered steep declines since Carlson’s banishment. his former timeslot has lost 50% of its audience in just four days. It’s getting beat by MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes.” And the abutting programs are also losing viewers.

Tucker Carlson's former timeslot has lost 50% of its audience in the four days since Fox News fired him. It's getting beat by MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes.'https://t.co/pvenRR5NU4 pic.twitter.com/g9I6O31my0

— News Corpse (@NewsCorpse) April 28, 2023

Advertisers have already checked out. Most major advertisers refused to be associated with the repulsive content that Carlson spewed. Hate speech, bigotry, and pro-Putin, anti-American totalitarianism doesn’t sell Campbell’s Soup or Ford Trucks. Carlson’s show was being almost solely supported by Mike Lindell’s MyPillow ads. And even that has been a rocky relationship.

SEE THIS: UH-OH: Tucker Carlson’s Biggest Advertiser – MyPillow – Pulls All of its Ads From Fox News

Fox News has tried to pretend that this advertiser exodus hasn’t affected their bottom line. They claim that advertisers who didn’t want their ads on Carlson’s show were moved to other shows. But there is no way that an advertiser is going to pay the same rate for some other, lower rated program, as they would have for Carlson. So Fox was obviously lying about not losing any revenue. And that was recently affirmed by none other than Rupert Murdoch’s own Wall Street Journal (as reported by Media Matters).

The confluence of lawsuit payouts. lost revenue, fired hosts, and cable carriage fee downgrades, is going to make the next few months particularly difficult for Fox News. Add to that the animosity of their former fans who are vowing to boycott the network because they believe it has now joined the radical, leftist, Soros-backed, commie, deep state, cabal that is beholden to fake President Biden, and what you have is a convergence of catastrophe. Can Fox News weather this storm? Stay tuned.

UPDATE…

Kayleigh McEnany took over Tucker Carlson’s old Fox News timeslot on Monday. The former lying Trump press secretary drew only 1.5 million viewers.

Jesse Watters (2.2 million) and Sean Hannity (1.9 million) were both down significantly.https://t.co/L9Kj7SvPy0

— News Corpse (@NewsCorpse) May 10, 2023

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Marjorie Taylor Greene Interview on 60 Minutes Was a Propaganda – and Ratings – Flop

Posted by Mark NC on April 3, 2023 at 1:46 pm. 2 Comments :

On Sunday night CBS News humiliated itself by presenting a sappy personal profile of Republican QAnon representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene, on its perennial news magazine, 60 Minutes. The interview was conducted by Lesley Stahl who, while having a renowned reputation as a journalist, made some amateurish mistakes in both her questioning and framing of the extremist congresswoman.

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The interview was rife with flagrant falsehoods by Greene, along with her attempts to rewrite history (videos below). She denied her grossly offensive comments about Democrats, about whom she used tortured and twisted logic to malign as pedophiles. She refuted her prior statements approving of shooting Nancy Pelosi. She pretended that she had nothing to do with posts on her Twitter account asserting that the mass shooting at the Parkland school was a “false flag” operation by gun safety advocates. That’s not the first time that she made that charge. She said the same thing about the mass shooting in Las Vegas.

All of these, as well as many other disgusting sentiments, were well documented and a few were displayed on screen as Greene issued her denials. And anyone who has been paying attention knows the depths to which Greene’s extremism descends.

The good news is that Green’s interview was not widely disseminated. The Nielsen ratings for 60 Minutes Sunday night were the second lowest for the season to date. And this episode was 33% lower than last weeks episode. Greene was the headliner for the program and, thus, is entitled to full credit for its failure.

Apparently America wasn’t interested in tuning in to her bullpucky. Perhaps fittingly, Nielsen reported that 6.66 million people watched the show. That’s an audience figure that should please the demonic demographic within the Republican Party.

It was irresponsible for CBS to give Greene a virtually unchallenged platform to advance her crackpot conspiracy theories. Stahl should make a point of following up the interview with a fact check and rebuttal on next week’s program. That probably won’t happen. But at least we can be encouraged by the low interest of American TV viewers in Greene’s gibberish and lies. Hopefully the only thing that people remember from this interview is how nuts the GOP has become to elevate someone like Greene.

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About a minute in, Marjorie Taylor Greene claims she never said Parkland was a false flag and gets fact checked. A post of hers is shown on the screen while she is denying it pic.twitter.com/pRfkO4f4kj

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 2, 2023

just watching the Marjorie Taylor Greene interview on 60 Minutes and yeah, there was no good reason to give this woman a platform pic.twitter.com/znIV6ZfEIE

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 3, 2023

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Trump Brags About the Fake ‘Ratings’ of His Self-Exalting Reality TV Show in East Palestine

Posted by Mark NC on February 24, 2023 at 1:47 pm. 2 Comments :

Donald Trump’s gargantuan, yet fragile, ego made another appearance this week at a shamelessly staged photo-op at the site of the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. And, true to form, Trump displayed the one constant character flaw that he has clung to for decades in public life: his frothing obsession with how he is characterized in the media.

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Trump gauges the success of everything he does by how well it is covered by the press. It doesn’t even matter if it is positive or negative coverage, as long as he is at the center of it. The twice-impeached, former reality TV game show host regards media attention and television ratings as the final arbiter and definitive authority of one’s inherent human value. Too bad for him that those metrics have been sharply declining.

Consequently, it isn’t surprising that following his wholly contrived circus act in East Palestine, Trump boasted about how magnificently it was received by the media. Although it was nothing more than a patronizing parade of pomposity wherein he distributed Trump-branded water and MAGA hats as if it were just another one of his cult rallies, Trump was elated by the allegedly massive audience that he imagined witnessed the affair. Never mind that it was not covered by any significant news outlet. Every broadcast network, as well as CNN, MSNBC, and even Fox News, ignored his self-serving sideshow.

However, that didn’t stop Trump from reveling in imaginary glory with a post on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social that hailed his pretend popularity. The posting was headlined “VIEWERSHIP REPORT.” It stated, preposterously, that there were 178,052,414 people who watched his Trainwreck Tour on traditional and social media. The accompanying text read that…

“This report searched for the term ‘East Palestine’ + ‘Trump’ what you will see is while traditional outlets like Fox News are woefully derelict in their reporting with what you did, the word is still getting out there in a big way. Specifically, when the announcement was made last week there was a bump of coverage reaching about 2 million on social channels and 10 million on other channels.”

It’s interesting that Fox News is the only network that Trump calls out by name. Setting that aside, there are a couple of other obvious problems with this “reporting.” First of all, nowhere in this post is there any indication of the source of these numbers. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that they were pulled straight out of his assumptions and delusions of grandeur.

Secondly, by merely searching for the terms “East Palestine” and “Trump,” the results, from whatever source, would include instances where the context would be decidedly contrary to the celebratory impressions that trump is implying. For instance, they would include any reference to “Trump insulted the good people of East Palestine,” or “East Palestine was demonstrably harmed by Trump exploiting their hardship.”

Oblivious to that reality, the post went on to say that…

“The visit meant a lot for the people of East Palestine and the surrounding communities. The trip gave them hope and raised the awareness needed to combat the incompetence of the Biden Administration. As you will see a sharp spike in the positive sentiments as well.”

Once again, there is absolutely nothing that supports any of those assertions. What’s more, it leaves out the fact that many observers – locally and in the national press – criticized Trump’s presence in the area as selfish, disruptive, and insensitive. And despite petulantly lashing out at President Biden, Trump also leaves out the fact that he never visited any of the many train derailments – some with fatalities – during his term in office. He also completely ignores the fact that his own policies may have contributed to the disaster in East Palestine. That was even noted by Steve Doocy, co-host of Fox and Friends:

“Apparently regulations regarding train safety were changed during the Trump administration. This particular railroad and others lobbied president Trump to dismantle an Obama era rule that would have required railroads to update their braking system […] The Trump administration undid that and said the cost exceeded the benefit.”

ruh roh pic.twitter.com/r0lxIMxAcw

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) February 23, 2023

By tying himself to television ratings – especially fake ones – Trump is putting himself at risk of being the cause of his own humiliation. That’s because his popularity has been in a steep decline since he was evicted from the White House by the American people. And it’s been evident in the lackluster attendance of his recent events, and even more to the point, in his TV ratings, such as when he announced his candidacy for the 2024 Republican nomination for president…

SEE THIS: Trump’s Dreary Campaign Announcement Speech Drew Dismal TV Ratings

UPDATE: Trump called in to Glenn Beck’s very low rated Internet program to say that Pete Buttigieg “came [to East Palestine] the next day and played to very small crowds.” Note that Trump is still obsessed with crowd size and that he said “played,” further affirming that he sees his role in public service as theater.

Trump says he had a bigger crowd size in E. Palestine than Pete Buttigieg: “He came the next day and played to very small crowds.” pic.twitter.com/SJPUJosHxh

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) February 24, 2023

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Trump’s Dreary Campaign Announcement Speech Drew Dismal TV Ratings

Posted by Mark NC on November 17, 2022 at 4:36 pm. NO Comments :

On Tuesday Donald Trump delivered a speech announcing his entry into the 2024 presidential race. The speech itself was typically riddled with lies, self-exaltation, and infantile insults. And despite the massive dose of melodrama, it was painfully dull.

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Trump’s speech was so boring that even Fox News cut away after forty interminable minutes so that Sean Hannity and his guests could try to rescue the night by slobbering all over him with preposterous praise. They actually gushed that Trump was “in as good a form as you have ever seen him,” and that “If he keeps on like this tonight, he is unbeatable in 2024.”

Trump was at his dystopian worst, warning of an America that is plagued by “blood-soaked streets” in “cesspool cities.” It was precisely the sort of dreadful dialogue that resulted in his losing in 2020. It’s why 65% of registered voters don’t want him to run in 2024. And it’s why he failed to produce the fabled “red wave” in 2022.

Nevertheless, Trump posted comments on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, bragging about the ratings for his apocalyptic address. One of the comments linked to the ultra-rightist Trump-fluffing website, Breitbart, where the headline lied “At Least 12.5 Million Watched Trump 2024 Announcement Live.” About four million of the viewers that Breitbart counted were reported by an unverified video webcaster. The other link was to a more reputable source, Mediaite, where the exaggerated headline read “Fox News and CNN Soar in Ratings During Trump’s Announcement.”

The actual ratings per Nielsen Media were 5.16 million on Fox News, and 2.43 million on CNN. MSNBC and the broadcast networks did not air the speech. So that’s a total of about 7.59 million viewers, not counting smalltime players like Newsmax and OAN.

For the record, the three major cable news networks drew 6.3 million the day before Trump’s speech, and 5.7 million the day after. So there wasn’t a particularly big spike for Trump. What’s more, the previous Tuesday the nets pulled in 13.8 million for election night. And for comparison, CBS’s “FBI” had 7.1 million viewers opposite Trump’s speech.

Another relevant comparison would be the televised hearings of the House Select Committee investing the January 6th insurrection that Trump incited. On the day that former White House aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, testified, the ratings soared to more than 13 million. And that was during the daytime. The Committee’s first hearing, that was held in primetime, drew about 20 million viewers, more than twice what Trump’s speech did.

At some point you would think that Trump might get the message and stop humiliating himself. Then again, a malignant narcissistic is not likely to accept the reality that he is widely despised. And of course, this is still the only way he has to fleece his flock and support himself. So even with these embarrassing stats, expect Trump to continue performing before his glassy-eyed cult disciples for as long as they shell out.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality:
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