Ratings

Fox Business Network Limps Out Of The Gate

Posted by on January 5, 2008 at 6:11 pm. NO Comments :

The new Fox Business Network may not be living up to the hype.

Although Nielsen ratings are not being officially released, numbers have leaked that don’t auger well for Murdoch’s new baby:

“After less than three months on the air, Fox Business Network is averaging a mere 6,000 viewers in daytime and 15,000 in primetime”

Putting that in perspective, FBN’s main competition is CNBC which averages 284,000 viewers in total day and 238,000 in primetime. And CNBC passes 90 million homes, about three times as many as FBN. Of course, it is still too early to gloat, but the network’s honchos led us to believe that they had much higher expectations. Roger Ailes told us that he would not settle for “anything short of a revolution.” And Murdoch gave this comment a few days after the launch:

“It’s two and a half to three days old and looks just terrific. Everybody, even in the industry, (recognizes) how different it is to CNBC, which is half-dead,”

It appears that the FBN revolution is having a little trouble taking on their half-dead competition. Time will deliver a fuller picture, but clearly FBN has work to do. However, rather than getting down to business, FBN’s executive vice president, Kevin Magee, is just sniping at CNBC, whom he accuses of having leaked these numbers:

“They spent dearly to get [FBN ratings], which is pretty crazy […] I think it shows how uber-concerned they are about us.”

Actually, it’s pretty much routine to get competitive ratings from Nielsen. And when you consider that Murdoch is well known for deficit financing his ventures indefinitely, it is a fairly hollow complaint that CNBC is investing in itself. This sort of griping just makes one wonder who is uber-concerned about whom?

Glenn Beck’s Ratings: Headline Snooze

Posted by on December 13, 2007 at 4:44 pm. 43 Comments :

When CNN announced the hiring of radio talk jock Glenn Beck almost two years ago, they used words like “cordial,” “conversational” and “not confrontational” to describe him. What they delivered was the polar opposite of that, as has been well documented by Media Matters. Despite CNN’s laughable depiction of Beck as “Miss Congeniality,” they knew exactly the sort of piffle they were peddling. Their programming strategy stated at the time was to…

“…build Beck into the type of TV personality that could siphon viewers from Bill O’Reilly, Joe Scarborough and other conservative hosts.”

They failed.

Beck’s ratings for November 2007 (25-54 demo) reveal a program on life support. At this point the humane thing to do would be to pull the plug and put Beck (and innocent TV viewers) out of their misery.

As shown here, Beck loses to all of his competitors in cable news. Both his live show and his repeat come in 4th out of four programs. That doesn’t leave much for him to brag about.

But that’s not the end of his problems. While Beck is unable to challenge his competition, he is also the weakest link on his own network.

On this chart you can see that the two lowest rated hours on Headline News belong to Beck. He is a TV anchor who is performing like a ship’s anchor and weighing down the network’s line-up.

This is not a case of Headline News being a less widely distributed network. Both Nancy Grace and Showbiz Tonight would either beat or play competitively against MSNBC’s schedule. Grace would even threaten CNN’s Lou Dobbs were she in the time slot.

These numbers demonstrate an inherent weakness that is specific to Beck. This is confirmed by looking at his year-to-year performance which is virtually flat. Beck’s audience in the demo for November 2006 was 148K (live) and 142K (repeat). That is essentially unchanged for 2007. For the same time period Grace’s numbers improved 20% (live), and 15% (repeat). Showbiz Tonight added 34% over their 2006 showing. So Beck is not only the poorest performer against his competition, he cannot even keep up with the growth on his own network.

It is also notable that Beck’s unpopularity seems to be confined to his television persona. In other media he is still a figure to be reckoned with. He is a top five talk radio host (last month he re-signed with Premiere Networks for $50 million) and he currently has a book on the New York Times Bestseller list. He certainly has fans who are able to find and consume his products elsewhere. So the fact that Beck can’t parlay his other media successes into something better than a washout on TV illustrates just how deeply unappealing he is as a television personality.

Glenn Beck WeakFor more evidence of this you just need to look back at the week Beck filled in for Paula Zahn last July. Despite moving up to CNN from Headline News, Beck barely scraped up the viewers he routinely got at his less-watched network home, Headline News. And he underperformed Zahn, who was canceled for poor ratings, by a whopping 23%

Clearly Beck has not lived up to the expectations CNN expressed when they hired him. And his performance over time suggests that there is not much reason to believe that he will improve. A responsible programmer would be seeking to cut their losses. And it’s not as if they don’t have a broad variety of AAA players that could be called up: Ed Schultz, Randi Rhodes, Thom Hartmann, Rachel Maddow, Stephanie Miller, Sam Seder, Taylor Marsh, Jim Hightower, Laura Flanders, Harry Shearer, or any other of the many distinguished progressive commentators. They could even draft their own Jack Cafferty who has developed a cult following on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.

You would think that the programming honchos at the network would be furiously grooming Beck’s replacement. Why wouldn’t they? They can’t blame Beck’s subterranean ratings on a generalized lack of interest because Beck excels in other media markets. They can’t be holding out for a sudden audience surge because there’s been no evidence of him connecting on that level in the past. They can’t believe that a racist, uninformed, arrogant host with a juvenile sense of humor is the next big thing in broadcasting because Fox News already has that market cornered and their ratings are sinking like a stone. And somebody at CNN must surely have noticed the soaring ascendancy of Keith Olbermann’s Countdown on MSNBC. It’s also worth noting that Dan Abrams’ new program, retooled to take a more aggressively honest approach to the news, is kicking Beck’s butt even though it is only a few weeks old.

So what is CNN waiting for? Are they masochistic gluttons for punishment who get pleasure from losing? Are they married to the repulsive and repudiated ideology spewed by Beck? Are they frightened, ineffectual, corporate bootlickers who couldn’t make a proper programming decision without a sackful of surveys and permission from their supervisor? It is just this simple: There is no business case for keeping Beck on the air. His program is a money pit and it’s fiscally harmful to the programs adjacent to it and, therefore, the network as a whole.

The only reason to give Beck a stay of execution would be fealty to the brand of caveman conservatism that he espouses. If CNN doesn’t cancel this stinker they will have settled, once and for all, the speculation as to whether they are a compromised media lapdog with an agenda aimed at placating the powerful and debasing journalism.

It’s time to pull the plug. Let CNN/Headline News know that Glenn Beck has to go. Let them know that you’re on to them and that keeping a loser like Beck reveals their biases. Let them know that you’re more interested in news and honest commentary than shallow contrarianism. Let them know that, although CNN has an obligation to provide diverse viewpoints, they have never had a program hosted by a progressive. And let them know that you have alternatives now (i.e. MSNBC, radio, the Internet, etc.) and you will not continue to watch CNN as long as it fails to provide programming that is honest, ethical and relevant to you, your community and your country.

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Bill O’Reilly: Censorship, Lies And Plunging Popularity

Posted by on November 28, 2007 at 12:12 pm. 1 Comments :

A couple of days ago Bill O’Reilly again demonstrated his aversion to free expression as well as his penchant for dishonesty. An op-ed that appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (a paper that O’Reilly regularly castigates as “far-left loons”) laid out a case for Impeachment: If not now, when? The column was accompanied by a political cartoon that had Bush and Cheney dressed up for their mugshots.

That was more than enough to set O’Reilly off on a rant that amounted to a call for censorship (YouTube):

“Look at this. This is ridiculous […] It’s based on nothing […] I want you to excoriate them. Let them have it […] It’s wrong though for them to do it. Don’t you think that showing a mug shot of a sitting president, a sitting vice president is irresponsible?”

O’Reilly is outraged that anyone would exercise their First Amendment rights to express an opinion about the criminality of this administration. He believes that such open expression “diminishes intelligent conversation,” (as if O’Reilly ever engaged in one) and his response is to shut down conversation entirely. Note that O’Reilly is complaining about the cartoon, not the content of the article. Although he does say that the cartoon is “based on nothing,” despite the fact that it is attached to a well-documented column that enumerates specific justifications for investigating the President and his administration.

After once again calling the paper “loons,” (an example of his idea of “intelligent conversation”) O’Reilly attacks the paper’s credibility by smugly declaring that it has lost 40% of its readers in the past ten years:

“Almost half of their readers have said ‘We don’t like you anymore, we’re not going to read you.'”

What O’Reilly leaves out is any actual context that would enlighten his viewers. The truth is that almost all major newspapers have suffered sharp declines in circulation over the past ten years. But more to the point, in only two years (Sept 2005 to Sept 2007) Bill O’Reilly himself has lost 33% of his total viewers and a whopping 59% of viewers in the all-important 25-54 age group. That’s more than half of his viewers saying, “We don’t like you anymore, we’re not going to watch you.”

This brief exchange reveals much about O’Reilly. It shows that while he is vociferously objecting to the free speech rights of others, he will use his own platform to misinform his viewers. No wonder they don’t like him anymore.

Tucker Carlson Gets A Vote Of No Confidence

Posted by on November 23, 2007 at 1:34 pm. 1 Comments :

MSNBC has been accused by many rightist pundits of adopting a liberal editorial policy. The sole basis of this charge appears to be the existence of Keith Olbermann’s Countdown. In an interview with NPR, MSNBC Sr VP Phil Griffin denies the charge saying that it is the host’s personalities, not their positions that make them popular. So Tucker’s already starting at a disadvantage. Griffin acknowledges that the network is trading on the audience identifying with the program’s anchors.

“Keith Olbermann is our brand; Chris Matthews is our brand. These are smart, well-informed people who have a real sense of history and can put things in context.”

That is an unequivocal expression of the faith Griffin has in Olbermann and Matthews. But when he is specifically asked whether Tucker Carlson is also their brand, he pauses and says…

“He is right now.”

Not exactly a vote of confidence. Griffin seems to be hinting that his answer might be different if you ask him again in a week or two. Looks like the only thing Tucker has to be thankful for is his well-connected family and a contract for an upcoming TV game show pilot. I still can’t get over this project – a remake of “Who Do You Trust?”

The remainder of the segment featured a couple of choice comments from Olbermann:

On his righteous cynicism: “We gave these people every benefit of the doubt. Our naturally contentious political arrangement in this country was silenced for well over a year after 9/11. We got hosed. We were manipulated. That trust that we put in these people, they did not deserve.”

On O’Reilly’s dementia: “As usual, Bill-O’s King Lear act, in which he threatens somebody with terrible consequences and boycotts and plagues of locusts, has produced nothing tangible other than making the object of his impotent rage richer.”

Speaking of Bill-O, his frantic efforts to disparage NBC and his nemesis Keith Olbermann (whom he refers to as “the smear guy”) are butting up against reality. O’Reilly has been falsely bashing NBC as a network in total decline, but the truth is that NBC News beat ABC and CBS in total viewers for the 2006/2007 season. And on the heels of Brian Williams’ appearance on Saturday Night Live, NBC has won the 25-54 demo for the month of November so far. O’Reilly’s analysis, as usual, is worthless, unless you’re really into childish fiction.

Fox Business Not Hurting Business At CNBC

Posted by on November 19, 2007 at 1:35 pm. NO Comments :

It’s been a month since the launch of the Fox Business Network. Actual ratings data won’t be available for a few more months but data on CNBC is available. To the extent that you can speculate as to FBN’s performance based on the performance of it’s main competitor, there is no particularly good news for the fledgling net.

For the month that FBN has been on the air, CNBC has grown 32% in total daytime viewers and 21% in total viewers for the full day. Of course, there could be other reasons for the ratings growth, but there is obviously no noticeable dip for CNBC as a result of the competition from Fox.

To underscore why viewers may want to stay away from FBN, on Friday they interrupted their news chatter with an alert that Apple was buying an 8% stake in chip maker, AMD. After about a minute they corrected the report saying that it was not Apple, but the government of Abu Dhabi (which both anchors mispronounced) that was buying in to AMD. That minute was plenty of time for investors to have made trades and, subsequently, lost money.

More reasons: On Tuesday FBN reported that Hewlett-Packard missed their earnings estimate by a penny. Eleven minutes later they admitted that they had erroneously reported the net income instead of the operating income, which actually beat estimates by four cents. I really hope that no one is trading based on what they see on FBN.

Olbermann Tops O’Reilly Again

Posted by on October 22, 2007 at 6:36 pm. 4 Comments :

It happened again last Friday. Keith Olbermann’s Countdown beat Bill O’Reilly’s Factor in the key 25-54 demo. And this time it was without the benefit of an NBC appearance to boost Olbermann’s numbers.

10/19/07 5p: 6p: 7p: 8p: 9p: 10p: 11p:
FNC BigStory: Hume: Shep: O’Reilly: H&C: Greta: O’Reilly:
  143 201 257 238 248 253 218
CNN Blitzer: Dobbs: Blitzer: Honest: King: Cooper: Cooper:
  197 229 190 172 283 136 150
MSNBC Hardball: Tucker: Hardball: Countdo.: Investig.: Investig.: Investig.:
  110 58 113 263 186 251 325

O’Reilly has been chalking up some high numbers recently, but he is still vulnerable and Olbermann is still growing at a much faster rate.

When CNN Presents Actual News…

Posted by on October 3, 2007 at 3:12 pm. NO Comments :

A little over a year ago, I noted the success that CNN had with a program on Osama Bin Laden that was part of its “CNN Presents” series of long-form news. The program was number one in its time period and was one of the few occasions that CNN bested its arch-rival Fox. At the time I asked:

“What are the odds that the editors at CNN will correctly analyze what happened here? […} will they figure out that there is a news vacuum in America that is crying out to be filled?”


Apparently not. In the past year, CNN has barely budged its place in the cable news net rankings. It actually declined 9%. In the same span of time, MSNBC has increased its viewership 53%, led by the Olbermann locomotive with a 73% rise. For the record, Fox News Channel was down 10%.

Now, the question I asked last year needs to asked again. In the latest report (pdf) for the the 3rd quarter of 2007, the number one program in the 25-54 demo is CNN Presents. It is also number two in total viewers, and is one of only two programs in the top 10 that is not from Fox (the other is CNN’s Larry King Live at #8).

Will CNN now recognize that the best way to compete with Fox’s tabloid coverage of car chases, missing white girls, and bashing Democrats, is to give the audience substance in the form of news that is accurate and relevant to their lives? Why is this such a difficult lesson to learn? Week after week, the networks competing with the Fox Propaganda Channel seem to be in a race to the bottom of the journalism barrel. Their meager attempts to emulate the worst of all possible role models cannot help but fail. Not only because it is a poor strategy, but because they can’t hope to woo viewers away from Fox’s authentic garbage with their own brand of contrived garbage.

Americans are thirsting for honest journalism that informs and enlightens. They want their news to be placed in a context that respects the integrity of the subject matter and the intelligence of the audience. When this is done, the networks get viewers and advertisers, as this quarter’s CNN Presents demonstrates. When it is not done they get Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson. Carlson, by the way, came in dead last in the 3-net beauty contest.

So pay attention CNN, and any other wannabe responsible news organizations. Try as you might with the likes of Nancy Grace or Lou Dobbs, the only time you come out ahead is when you give the people what they’re clamoring for. Honesty, integrity, and a commitment to ethics and excellence, is the path to success. CNN Presents is not a fluke. It is the only program that has prevailed against Foxic waste, and it has now done so twice. Are you getting the message?

Democratic Response Draws More Viewers Than Bush

Posted by on September 16, 2007 at 11:44 am. NO Comments :

When Bush addressed the nation last Thursday to persist in pushing his failed war agenda, he succeeded in pulling in a sizable portion of the television viewing audience. The only problem for him is that the response by Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed pulled in 7% more viewers.

Presidential Address – Thursday, September 13, 2007 (000’s)
Network Bush Address Dem Response
Fox News 745 813
MSNBC 455 446
CNN 454 507
Totals 1654 1766

Ordinarily, the opposition party response to a presidential address would be expected to lose viewers relative to the headliner from the White House. Just being competetive would be considered a victory of sorts. Consequently, these numbers demonstrate that there is significant curiosity in the TV viewing public as to the alternatives to administration talking points. The fact that the President can’t easily outperform an obscure senator that most of the country has never heard of, is proof that people are dissatisfied with his tired rhetoric.

It’s interesting to note that the greatest divergence in viewers in favor of the Democrats occurs on Fox News. So even Fox News viewers seem to be open to fresh perspectives and policies on ending the war. It’s too bad the folks at the Fox Entertainment Network didn’t think their audience deserved to hear Reed’s response. They were the only broadcast network to decline to air the Senator’s remarks. Still, more viewers in the cable news universe were exposed to an alternative perspective than to another of Bush’s robotic recitations of his standard pro-war litany.

This may also mean that the audience for the paid-for response by John Edwards might have drawn a larger than expected audience, validating his strategy and expanding the reach of the anti-war message. The other candidates, and the Democratic Party, should pay attention to these results and develop new tactics that make effective use of them.

The O’Reilly Fracture: Countdown To Victory Edition

Posted by on September 10, 2007 at 5:55 pm. 3 Comments :

Keith Olbermann’s Countdown has reached a milestone that many thought was out of reach. After getting a boost from an airing during the pre-season football broadcast on NBC a couple of weeks ago, Countdown has burst into a real competition with its nemesis, The O’Reilly Factor.

The highpoint of the week for Olbermann was Friday when he bested O’Reilly in the 25-54 demo by 39,000 viewers. But the trend has been heading this way for a while. On Thursday, O’Reilly took the hour, but Olbermann had won the first half (Countdown: 408K – Factor: 373K). An average of all airings for the shows for the week gave O’Reilly a lead of just 11.7K demo viewers. A year ago O’Reilly was clobbering Olbermann by 279K. Are the walls closing in around you Billy?

The first full week after Olbermann’s NBC appearance, Countdown spiked 17% over its 2nd quarter 2007 average. This week that bump is 37%, so there is no evidence that this train is losing speed. The Factor, on the other hand, is still under-performing its 2nd quarter average by 16%. O’Reilly is quickly becoming the Little Train That Couldn’t.

A key point in this victory is that, while last week’s success was achieved with O’Reilly on vacation, this week Bill was on duty and he still got his loofah handed to him. Also, for the record, Olbermann appeared during halftime on the Saints-Colts game Thursday which might have given him an extra push on Friday. And the week was shortened by the Labor Day holiday (Countdown did not air on Monday but O’Reilly did. The Factor pulled in just 329K which was its 2nd worst number for the week).

All of this leads me to quote from the insightful analysis of a truly visionary media scholar:

Hopefully NBC will recognize what’s happening here. And it isn’t just that Olbermann is a phenomenon who warrants additional network attention (although that’s true). It is also that there is a vastly underserved market for mainstream progressive news that is factual and compelling. That is a message that all of the media should heed and act on. It’s time to stop coddling losers like Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson. It’s time to stop pandering to rightist, corporate media. It’s time to start reshaping the media into something more diverse and representative of America.

Mark @ News Corpse ~ September 4, 2007

By the way…Happy Birthday Bill-O.

Post NBC: Countdown Jumps, O’Reilly Slumps

Posted by on September 4, 2007 at 5:11 pm. 2 Comments :

On August 26, 2007, Keith Olbermann’s Countdown was broadcast on NBC. Despite a scattered schedule wherein the program was delayed or preempted in many markets, it performed respectably, delivering 4.1 million viewers. But what I was waiting for, was to see if there would be any afterglow that reflected on his MSNBC airing. There was:

For the week ending August 31, Countdown averaged 278,000 viewers in the key 25-54 demo. That’s a 17% increase over the program average for the 2nd quarter of 2007. It is fair to conclude that this spike was due almost entirely to the promotional value of the NBC broadcast. None of the other programs on MSNBC’s schedule enjoyed a comparable bounce. Olbermann’s numbers exceeded his 2nd quarter average (230K) as well as his prior week average (242K).

At the same time, The O’Reilly Factor suffered a rather severe slump. For the same week, it was off its 2nd quarter average by 51%. As result, Countdown came close to beating the Factor on Monday and Wednesday. But the piece de resistance came Thursday when Countdown actually fractured the Factor, topping it by a whopping 94,000 demo viewers. That’s not merely a win, it’s a rout.

It should be noted that Bill O’Reilly was on vacation last week and that explains at least part of the weakness in his ratings. But even comparing last week’s Countdown to the Factor’s 2nd quarter average shows that Olbermann cut a good 10% off of O’Reilly’s lead in just five days. O’Reilly has taken plenty of vacations that did not result in him losing to Countdown. That fact underscores the significance of last week’s performance of both shows.

Hopefully NBC will recognize what’s happening here. And it isn’t just that Olbermann is a phenomenon who warrants additional network attention (although that’s true). It is also that there is a vastly underserved market for mainstream progressive news that is factual and compelling. That is a message that all of the media should heed and act on. It’s time to stop coddling losers like Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson. It’s time to stop pandering to rightist, corporate media. It’s time to start reshaping the media into something more diverse and representative of America.