Ratings

Fox News Ratings Fall Off A Cliff In 2011

Posted by on December 29, 2011 at 12:03 pm. 28 Comments :

In another example of the declining fortunes of the right-wing extremism propagated by conservative media and displayed so prominently by the GOP family of clowns competing for the Republican nomination for president, Nielsen has reported that the ratings for Fox News have taken a steep dive in 2011.

Fox News Ratings 2011

Of the three main cable news networks, Fox News is the only one that went down compared to their ratings in 2010. And a double-digit decline at that. FoxPods will, as usual, point out that Fox is still the top cable news network, but that is beside the point. Its audience is peeling away at a rapid rate and over time they will be unable to sustain their leading position. It is also important to put those numbers in context. While Fox is the #1 cable news network, they lag far behind the broadcast nets. In fact, the highest rated program on Fox (O’Reilly Factor) has about half the viewers of the lowest rated broadcast news program (CBS Evening news).

All three cable networks were impacted by extraordinary events that affected their ratings performance. CNN was helped by breaking news stories like the death of Osama Bin Laden and the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear crisis. Because CNN has the best developed network of international bureaus, viewers frequently turn to CNN for major breaking news events.

MSNBC was hurt by the loss of Keith Olbermann and numerous schedule shakeups, but still managed to land in positive territory. Fox, of course, lost a notorious personality in Glenn Beck, but that likely kept Fox from declining even more than they did. Beck’s ratings were in free fall and dropped 37% between January and his sign-off in June. His replacement, “The Five,” has held pretty steady since its debut.

The fall of Fox News is striking evidence of the shift in the nation’s attitudes toward the ultra-conservative philosophy advanced by Fox and their brazenly biased facilitators. For Fox to be alone in decline in a year that includes a Republican-only primary campaign is a devastating indictment of the network and the propaganda tactics they employ.

2012 will provide a more diverse range of electoral news as the general election takes shape and Democrats are included in the story arc. That is not likely to boost Fox’s ratings position, but it will probably inflame their rhetoric and result in even more divisive attacks and demonstrations of derangement. Hold on to your hats, America.

GOP Debates Confirm That Fox Is More Cult Than News

Posted by on September 13, 2011 at 2:35 pm. 3 Comments :

In May of 2007 I did an analysis of the ratings of the GOP 2008 presidential primaries broadcast on cable news. The conclusion showed that Fox News viewers remained glued to Fox regardless of what else on the air. I wrote at the time that…

“Fox viewers are married to the channel and couldn’t care less what’s playing down the dial. Their hypnotic attachment filters out all other sensory stimulation, even if it’s something that would ordinarily excite them. […] Fox viewers appear to be more loyal to Fox than to Republicans or conservatism. This misdirected allegiance bestows a far more influential authority onto a media entity than ought ever to be considered. It suggests that the bombastic demagogues that Fox has shaped into celebrity anchors truly do weigh down their transfixed disciples.”

The Cult of Foxonality™ was affirmed when Fox acquired Glenn Beck and saw his ratings (temporarily) skyrocket. Fox viewers were wholly uninterested in the conservative schlock-jock when he was on CNN. Switching channels, even to see someone they would later slobber over, was too much trouble. But when he moved to Fox their slobbering could begin in earnest.

Now the Republican primary debates for 2012 demonstrate that little has changed in four years. Fox viewers are simply not inclined to stray from their electronic hearth no matter the attraction. The GOP debate on MSNBC was watched by more than 5.4 million viewers. CNN’s Gop/Tea Party debate drew 3.6 million [Note: It was competing against Monday Night Football and the U.S. Tennis Open Finals]. However, the ratings for Fox News hardly budged. The primetime average for Fox News in the second quarter of 2011 was 2.184 million viewers. On September 7, during MSNBC’s debate coverage, Fox’s primetime average was actually a little higher at 2.253 million. On September 12, during CNN’s debate coverage, Fox’s primetime average dipped to 1.791 million.

Clearly Fox News viewers can’t be bothered to dig the remote out from under the cushions in order to see what the next Republican nominee for president might say if it’s on another channel. That’s too bad because they missed Rick Perry complaining that Michele Bachmann underestimated the price for which he could be bought.

Perry: “I raise about thirty million dollars, and if you’re saying I can be bought for five thousand, I’m offended.”

That’s telling her. Perry knows how important it is to defend your brand, or else cronies and lobbyists will start to lowball you. And that can really cut into your profit margin. So the question is – How much can he be bought for?

Fox viewers also missed the Tea Party audience at the debate express their compassion for their fellow Americans. In a discussion about access to health care, moderator Wolf Blitzer presented Ron Paul with a hypothetical patient who required intensive care but had no insurance. “Are you saying that society should just let him die?” Blitzer asked. Paul’s answer in the negative was nearly drowned out by numerous audience members shouting “Yeah!” It looks like Republicans owe former (and perhaps future) Florida representative Alan Grayson an apology for vilifying him when he said that the GOP health care plan was “Don’t get sick! And if you do get sick, die quickly!”

The next GOP debate will be carried by Fox News so the FoxPods won’t have to worry about what’s on opposite O’Reilly. They can lean back and scarf down their Happy Meal without missing anything important. Or, at least, anything that Fox thinks is important.

Fox News Continues Ratings Slump – Q2 2011

Posted by on June 29, 2011 at 12:41 am. 5 Comments :

This is becoming redundant, but the latest ratings survey once again has Fox News slouching alone as the only cable news network to lose viewers year-over-year. The decline holds for both total viewers and for the 25-54 year old demographic, with the worst showing a double-digit decline in the demo for primetime.


The next quarter will be interesting in that it will be the first without Fox’s big asylum draw, Glenn Beck. Beck’s program signs off in two days, after which Beck promises that liberals will pray for the days when he was on TV. If he believes that his delusions are becoming more severe.

The big question for Fox is what will take his place? His disciples are not going to be satisfied with some run-of-the-mill lunatic. What’s odd is that there has been no announcement of any replacement for Beck. It appears that they intend to run with fill-ins for the time being. But there’s going to have to be a new title come Friday. Perhaps they will just start Bret Baier an hour early. We’ll see.

Keith Olbermann’s New Countdown Premieres to Strong Ratings

Posted by on June 22, 2011 at 3:42 pm. 9 Comments :

Monday night marked the return of Keith Olbermann to television. His new program on Current TV was closely modeled on the old MSNBC version. What everybody has been waiting to find out is whether or not his previous audience would find him farther up the dial.

Well, they did. The new Countdown pulled in 179,000 viewers in the key 25-54 demographic. Of course that is not as much as he was drawing at MSNBC, but Current is in only about two-thirds the number of homes (60 million vs. 95 million). Nevertheless, Olbermann drew in excess of two-thirds of his prior viewers. And he handily beat CNN’s “In the Arena” with Eliot Spitzer (89,000).

More importantly, Olbermann increased Current’s average audience for the time period by 600%. That’s significant because the move to Current has always recognized the need to build the network’s audience and distribution. It is interesting to note that when Olbermann began on MSNBC they were in roughly the same number of homes as Current is in now. Olbermann was a key factor in putting MSNBC on the map, and Current is hoping that he will do the same for them.

It’s important, however, to keep these numbers in perspective. They represent a single day of programming – the premiere day. That could mean that subsequent days may fall off. Or it could mean that fans who haven’t yet found the homestead may do so and the numbers will rise. The only numbers that will have any real meaning are those released after the first year so that a longer-term trend can be observed. And in that time Current promises other schedule changes that will have an impact on future performance.

Today Olbermann and his fans can enjoy this morsel, but the main course has not yet been served. So be patient and stay hungry.

Jon Stewart’s Daily Show Is More Popular Than Fox News

Posted by on June 4, 2011 at 3:03 pm. 6 Comments :

The recent May ratings data revealed the weakness of Fox News, particularly when compared to their competitors. But Fox is also getting whipped by an old adversary about whom their CEO, Roger Ailes, once said…

“He openly admits he’s sort of an atheist and a socialist. […] He hates conservative views. He hates conservative thoughts. He hates conservative verbiage. He hates conservatives. He’s crazy.”

That attack on Jon Stewart came right after Ailes said of the folks at NPR that “They are, of course, Nazis.” And who can forget Bill O’Reilly dismissing Stewart’s audience as a bunch of “stoned slackers.”

Well, Stewart is getting the last laugh. His program on Comedy Central averaged 2.3 million total viewers this May and was 19% higher than May of 2010. The Fox News primetime lineup for May averaged only 1.85 million viewers and declined by 10%. In fact, Stewart beat every program on Fox in total viewers except for Bill O’Reilly. However, projections for demographic breaks of 25-54 and 18-49 suggest that Stewart beat even O’Reilly, likely delivering twice as many demo viewers as O’Reilly.

Jason Easley at PoliticusUSA provides additional detail as well as the observation that Stewart’s victory was achieved in the late night time period against Fox programs that air in primetime.

“This is why Fox News both hates and fears Jon Stewart. Not only is he more popular than they are, but he devotes much of his program to exposing the biased reporting of FNC. […] He is literally teaching his audience, which is bigger than FNC’s, how to see through the partisan propaganda that Rupert Murdoch has based his network on.”

The May ratings book also noted that MSNBC is the number one cable news network among 18-34 year-olds. This reinforces the growing conclusion that the next generation of television news consumers is rejecting the Fox News model of a hyperbolic, sensationalized, rabidly partisan, lie factory. Young viewers are clearly more discriminating, more intelligent, and more open to diverse news sources. That is a formula that can only contribute to Fox’s problems as they continue to lose market share.

Fox is a network that relies on a closed loop of information and opinion to keep their audience ignorant and obedient. They can circulate their disciples amongst their own programs, talk radio, and a few sanctioned web sites, but they cannot tolerate free-thinking individuals. The young viewers who made MSNBC first in the category, and those who watch the Daily Show, can’t be fooled into attending Tea Parties or believing that the president is socialist Muslim from Kenya. So the more impact programs like the Daily Show have on illuminating the inanities and hypocrisies of the media, the better for our society, our country, and our world.

May Cable News Ratings: Fox News Gets Stomped

Posted by on June 1, 2011 at 8:29 pm. 33 Comments :

Ratings for cable news for the month of May 2011, bring bad news for Fox News. In the key demographic group of 25-54 year-olds, Fox was alone in declining during the primetime hours.


This was a really bad month for Fox News which lost viewers in the demo for every primetime show. Bill O’Reilly dropped 9%, Sean Hannity dropped 6%, and Greta Van Susteren dropped 12%. These declines occurred while almost every primetime program for both CNN and MSNBC gained by double digits. The only good news for Fox is that Glenn Beck, which sunk 17% in the demo, has already been canceled so he can’t do too much more harm.

An interesting wrinkle in this book is that MSNBC was also the number one cable news network among 18-34 year-olds in primetime, with a 7% advantage over CNN and a 14% lead over Fox News. That is not a demo that gets much attention from an advertising point of view, but it signals an opportunity for future growth that the network can exploit. It also affirms the weakness of Fox among young viewers. That explains why Beck is so openly hostile to young people.

Let’s Keep Kicking Fox News While It’s Down

Posted by on April 27, 2011 at 8:15 pm. 12 Comments :

Fox News’ ratings are beginning to reflect the general disenchantment that America is experiencing with the lunatic fringe as represented by Republicans and Tea Partyers (but I repeat myself). In the latest Nielsen reporting for April 2011, the most prominent Fox programs have precipitously declined:


What is especially notable about this is that almost all of the competing cable news programs saw robust increases in viewers in the same time period – many up by double digits (including Rachel Maddow who beat Sean Hannity last Friday). The one exception is MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, but that is only because it is being compared to Keith Olbermann’s numbers for Countdown which was in O’Donnell’s time slot last year.

This is part of a continuing downtrend for Fox and the Right-Wing Carnival that includes Birthers, Climate Hoaxers, Unplanned Parenthoodies and, of course, Tea Baggers. The recent tax day rallies sponsored by the Tea-publicans struggled to attract a few dozen whiny protesters, while Democrats and union members showed up by the tens of thousands to protest rollbacks of long-held rights for workers. Town hall meetings are being crowded with progressive citizens intent on rescuing Medicare from regressive GOP legislation. The ultimate cinematic fantasy of rightist ego-centrism, Atlas Shrugged, is such an abysmal failure at the boxoffice that the producer has already come out publicly to state that he is reconsidering his plans to expand the release and make any sequels.

It appears that the audience for idiocy is drying up. And the primary platform for aggregating that audience, Fox News, is feeling it where it hurts – in the ratings. They have already ejected the king of the idiots, Glenn Beck, whose program has been losing viewers and advertisers for months. Now it’s time to return focus to the remaining disinformers on Fox like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, and Neil Cavuto. These people were every bit as bad as Beck before Beck joined the network, and they should not get off the hook now.

By maintaining pressure on Fox News we can have a real impact on the media environment. Viewers must be made to feel embarrassed by any association with the network of lies. And other media organizations must cease to regard Fox as a legitimate journalistic enterprise.

This is the time to ramp up efforts to prod cable companies to make all news networks available on the basic tier so that there aren’t some that have unfair advantages over others. And while we’re at it, we should advise our cable providers that we will cancel our service rather than pay more to support Fox News. Fox is presently renegotiating some of their cable contracts and demanding much higher fees. We need to make the argument that they don’t deserve them, particularly if it impacts the bills of consumers who don’t want Fox to begin with.

There has never been a better time to advance this cause. Fox is weakening by the day, and we have the wind at our backs. Keep up the pressure. Keep educating your family and friends. Keep Tweeting and sharing on Facebook. Fox is wobbling and it will fall down if we push hard enough.

[Update:] A new Gallup poll confirms the evolving distaste for right-wingedness. The Tea Party unfavorable ratings are at their highest point ever.

Rachel Maddow Beats Hannity’s Media Bias Special

Posted by on April 25, 2011 at 11:33 pm. 5 Comments :

It’s time for the folks at Britannica to replace whatever picture they’ve been using to illustrate “poetic justice” and insert Rachel Maddow’s picture in its place.

Last Friday, Fox News broadcast a special episode of the Sean Hannity program that promised to get “Behind the Bias,” of what he called the liberal, Obama-mania media. What was truly special about the show is that it came in second place to Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC. Maddow beat Hannity in the key advertising demographic of 25-54 year olds. How fitting for Hannity to lose to a liberal on the night he thought he would be exposing them.

Hannity began the program by saying…

“Now, it is common knowledge that the mainstream media, from the major television networks to the country’s most influential newspapers, are biased against the GOP.”

Common knowledge? Sure it is. It is common in that it is unexceptional or of inferior quality. And it is knowledge in the same way that lemmings “know” to follow their fellow lemmings off the cliff.

Hannity provided nothing in the hour-long program to support his opening assertion of bias against the GOP. He certainly didn’t address the fact that the top Sunday news broadcasts have featured far more Republicans than Democrats. And he failed to note that all three broadcast networks are owned by giant, multinational corporations with predictably conservative leanings. And there was no mention that even newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post advance conservative themes like support for Wall Street and foreign wars. And, of course, he didn’t discuss the role of Fox News itself as the preeminent organ of institutional bias and its being a part of a conservative empire that includes the Wall Street Journal, 27 television stations, dozens of newspapers, Internet sites, and satellite broadcasting.

The show was mainly a collection of incidents that Hannity regarded as bias. However, that does not actually prove bias. It only catalogs it. And since Hannity makes no effort to catalog all incidents of bias, including those on the right, he proves nothing. Furthermore, there is a difference between cataloging random, subjective soundbites by individuals, and conducting an objective content analysis that looks at the whole institution of the media. Hannity doesn’t come anywhere near that sort of examination.

In short, Hannity’s program on bias was blatantly biased. It would be easy to collect twice as many examples of right-wing media disparaging the left as Hannity presented directed at Republicans. But what is even worse is that Hannity had to manufacture some of his evidence of bias.

For instance, he played a clip of Katie Couric saying “Good morning. The Gipper was an airhead.” Hannity left that sentence fragment hanging with the implication that it was Couric expressing her own opinion. Had he played the clip for a few seconds longer, his audience would have heard her say “The Gipper was an airhead. That’s one of the conclusions of a new biography of Ronald Reagan that’s drawing a tremendous amount of interest and fire today.” She went on to say that the book’s conclusions were “startling” and that the author still thought Reagan was “a great president.” But Hannity chose to misrepresent a tiny slice of the comment in order to advance his phony premise.

It is heartening to know that Hannity’s hour of deceit was so poorly received. It is even more gratifying that he was beaten in the ratings by someone as conscientious and committed to honest discourse as Rachel Maddow.

A Sign From God? Glenn Beck’s Cursed Ratings

Posted by on March 30, 2011 at 2:42 am. 2 Comments :

Listen up brothers and sisters, for the Word of God is nigh and sinners must repent with all haste. The End Times prophesied in the Good Book are upon us and there is no time to delay if you desire salvation.


Take for instance the wayward soul we know as Glenn Beck. With three months of the year expired and thrice a ratings calamity. The latest quarterly book of numbers reveal that, compared to just one year ago, Beck has lost 37% of his most valuable audience, those between the advertiser-blessed ages of 25-54. And the loss amongst the whole of the viewership is 30%. He was even defeated by the dreaded Maddow twelve days past.

The signs are clear and cannot be ignored. God is pissed! He has said so unambiguously. Deuteronomy 28:27-29, describes the punishment from the Lord if you should fail to follow his laws:

27: The LORD will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.
28: The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart.
29: And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee.

We hardly need to speak of Egypt and how badly Beck botched that. The emerods (or hemorrhoids) he has already had, and it nearly killed him. The potential blindness he announced tearfully last year. The madness is self evident.

And now the third curse attacking his prosperity is upon him. And this only days after whispers that his program might be cast into the television ether by the Pharisees of Fox. His audience is fleeing, as are his sponsors. And five radio stations denied him just since the new year.

Let us all pray that Beck has his affairs in order – and I don’t mean the ones with interns and altar boys. These are surely the End of Days and for Beck the seasons are coming to a close. The Lord works in mysterious ways, but we knew that when S/He created Beck in the first place.

Why Does Fox News Keep Glenn Beck Around?

Posted by on March 16, 2011 at 10:43 am. 10 Comments :

In a discussion on the fairness and balance of Fox News, the network’s CEO Roger Ailes famously told Barbara Walters that, “I’m not in politics. I’m in ratings. We’re winning.”

If we are to take Ailes at his word, then we have to wonder why he keeps Glenn Beck on the schedule. The program has been shedding viewers like a mongrel with a scalp condition for months. His year-to-year numbers dropped 40% in January and another 32% in February. He is sinking faster than any other program on cable news. A couple of weeks ago Rachel Maddow drew more viewers than Beck for the the first time ever. Over 300 companies have declined to advertise on his program due to offensive content like his anti-Semitic rants against George Soros and his bloodthirsty allusions to having to “shoot them [radicals] in the head.”

Last week Beck was on vacation and Fox Business host Andrew Napolitano filled in for him. The result was the ratings barely budged. And on Tuesday Rachel again drew more viewers than Beck’s program with its guest host. This is fairly conclusive evidence that the audience for that time period is constant regardless of who is on the air. Consequently, Fox could replace Beck at any time (as some speculation suggests is under consideration) without suffering any ill effects in the ratings.

So why don’t they? They could certainly fill that hour with another conservative mouthpiece that would cost them far less to employ. They could make much more money by recovering the A-List advertisers who have previously abandoned the program. And they would not have to endure the embarrassment of being associated with Beck’s delusional conspiracy theories that are lately drawing criticism from even the most stalwart advocates of conservatism.

The only reason that a so-called “news” network would continue to employ someone whose analyses and assertions are so distant from any sane definition of journalism, and so reviled by more rational observers, is because the network approves of, and agrees with, his inane proclamations of doom and his determination to transform political discourse into a feast of demonization and personal destruction.


The lesson from Beck’s absence last week is profound. If after learning that their ratings would remain constant in a post-Beck world, Fox News elects to keep him in the lineup anyway, we must conclude that Ailes and his boss Rupert Murdoch, are on board Beck’s crazy train. That’s the answer to the question in the headline. Ailes and Murdoch cannot disassociate themselves from the Beck Doctrine. They obviously regard Beck’s contribution to their mission as more important than either money or respect. So the next question is: What the hell is their mission?