The all-important May ratings (PDF) period has produced what is becoming a predictably recurrent theme: MSNBC is growing faster than any of its cable news rivals.

Both Fox and CNN declined in persons 2+ for the total day as well as for primetime. Their numbers for the 25-54 demo were better, but still far below the increases at MSNBC. Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown” again set the pace for growth at the network, advancing 63% (P2+) and 35% (25-54) over May 2006. Compare that with the O’Reilly Factor’s tepid 12% (25-54) rise, and an actual drop in total viewers of 1%. Two years ago O’Reilly had 4 times the audience that Olbermann had. Today that is down to 2 times. That’s still a hefty lead, but it’s also a preciptious drop. And since Countdown’s ascendency has not abated over these years, it suggests that the programs could be tied two years from now.

Much of the news this month seems tailor made for a Fox resurgence – a lot of sensationalism and gossip. There was the New Jersey “terrorist” threat (which Fox hammered on), Alberto Gonzalez’ congressional testimony (which Fox almost ignored), tornadoes in Kansas, the war supplemental bill, Jerry Falwell’s death, and, as always, Rosie, Lindsay, and American Idol. Fox also hosted the first Republican presidential primary debate. But none of these things boosted Fox’s performance as one might expect. The Republican debate, in fact, only matched the numbers that O’Reilly gets as the regular program in that time slot.

A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism reported that the story generating the most coverage in the first quarter of 2007 was Iraq. But while the rest of the media was reporting on Bush’s “surge” and what has become the deadliest month of the year to date in Iraq, Fox devoted less than half the airtime to these events than did MSNBC, who provided the most coverage. Could this be part of the reason that Fox viewership is tanking?

Results like these continue to show that there is an underserved market for news consumers who are tired of the antiquated stylings of CNN and repulsed by the scatological, fact-deficient fare that passes for news at Fox. It remains to be seen if the programming geniuses at any of these networks will recognize the obvious and bring back real news.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism just published the results of their study of news coverage for the first quarter of 2007. The breakdown of stories covered, and the amount of time dedicated to those stories, reveals the priorities of the three main cable news networks. The standout amongst the statistics is that Fox News broadcast significantly less coverage of the war in Iraq than MSNBC or CNN. In fact, Fox devoted less than half the airtime to the subject than MSNBC, whose coverage led the pack.

Percent of Newshole Devoted To Four Major Stories on Cable TV
Dec. 31, ’06 – Mar. 31, ’07

There is probably no one who would dispute that the war in Iraq, and the Washington debates fueled by it, is the single most important news event of the year (and several preceding years). It dominated the media producing about three times as much coverage as the next most covered story. And yet Fox relegates it to an also-ran, preferring to spend nearly as much time on Anna Nicole Smith as on the war.

Fox also minimized the most serious parade of scandal that has faced the U.S. Justice Department since the Nixon Administration (see John Mitchell and the Saturday Night Massacre). Practically ignoring the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the firing of U.S. Attorneys by a partisanly-motivated Justice Department, the 2% of airtime Fox afforded the affair was half of what CNN gave it and a quarter of MSNBC’s scheduling.

The one area in which Fox excelled was in coverage of departed pin-up/heiress, Anna Nicole Smith. Fox’s coverage of Smith approximately doubled the coverage of CNN and MSNBC. Now we know why they had to leave the war footage on the cutting room floor.

These results are an affirmation of the Fox slogan, “We Report, You Decide,” so long as you leave out the first part. However, this may be consistent with their programming strategy which appears to be to drain their reports of as much substance as possible so that you are left unable to decide.

Update: The PEJ also released a study this week that measures the coverage of the presidential candidates. While there was more time spent on Democrats, don’t be too hasty drawing conclusions:

“…nearly two-thirds of the election coverage (61%) was specifically about candidates vying for the Democratic nomination. This was nearly three times those that focused on Republican candidates (24%). Another 13% dealt with both parties. […] conservative talkers, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage were the most Democratic focused of all-75% of their time on Democrats and only 13% focused mainly on Republicans.”

So while there was more “coverage” of Democrats, that extra focus really translates into more time bashing them. If you weren’t already confused, the right-wing media machine is more than happy to further muddy the waters.

O’Reilly Responds: ThinkProgress has a transcript of O’Reilly explaining that the reason Fox has less coverage of Iraq is because another bomb going off “doesn’t mean anything.” The rest of the transcript is equally as disgusting.

Bill O’Reilly just got some more bad news (pdf). His hairline isn’t the only thing that’s receding. The February ratings show that he has the slowest growing program (11%) of all the cable news primetime programs in the 25-54 demographic. And he is clearly bringing down the Fox network because the same is true for their whole primetime block. This despite the fact that Greta Van Susteren had the 2nd highest growth (49%) after Keith Olbermann’s Countdown (61%).

It’s revealing to look at the trend over the past year. The chart below shows the Factor’s percent growth/loss year over year for each of the last five ratings periods. And just for fun, let’s throw in a comparison to Countdown for the same stretch.

It can’t be making O’Reilly very comfortable knowing that four of the past five sweeps he has been losing viewers while Keith has been packing them in.

Fox itself must be feeling a little queasy. In the past few weeks they have been making some pretty desperate programming moves. Starting with the dorm room bull sessions of “Red Eye”, Fox takes a stab at attracting an audience that has yet to discover the joys of Depends. Then this past weekend they broadcast “Reel Politics,” a supposedly humorous look at Hollywood, cementing their reputation as purveyors of comedy (If they think Hollywood would run Washington into the ground, just wait till you see what politicians would do to Tinseltown). Also in that vein was their chronicle of Internet life, “It’s Out There,” a program aiming for the modernity of the 21st century with art direction from “My Favorite Martian.” At least they staffed it with a couple of babes from their sinking O’Reilly franchise, psuedo-Democrat Kirsten Powers and the noxious Michelle Malkin. Too bad neither of them could muster up the charisma of a banana slug. But the real programming genius was the embarrassingly cheesy, laugh track challenged “1/2 Hour News Hour.” If they had not told me in the title that the program is a half hour long I might have been confused. But in fact, it only seems like an hour.

This new direction for Fox must be roiling the Comedy Central nervous system. If they don’t act precipitously, they may find their territory invaded and occupied by the network that helped Bush to do the same thing to Iraq. I would advise CC to respond by hitting Fox hard where they are most vulnerable – right in the journalism. The obvious move would be to immediately launch an evening newscast. That would be a frontal assualt that Fox would neither expect nor be able to counter. Because even Comedy Central has more experience in news than Fox.

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

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

Jan. #’s: 25-54 Demo vs. Jan. 2006:

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

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

“Meet the Paris Hilton of Television News”


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MSNBC has beaten the competition in terms of audience growth consistently for the last twelve months. So it should come as no surprise that MSNBC’s tally for 2006 shows not only the highest gain over 2005, but the only gain amongst cable news networks.

As usual, it was Keith Olbermann’s Countdown that fueled the increase. Countdown was up 60% in total viewers and 67% in the 25-54 demo. Keith’s nemesis, Bill O’Reilly, can still boast about being the number one program on cable news, but those footsteps he hears are not the pitter-patter of the Culture Warrior Youth.

If you kiddies are looking for something constructive to do, here’s a project for you:

Fox News is currently renegotiating its contracts with cable carriers. They have been lumbering under one of the worst deals in the business because they were desperate for carriage when they started out. Now they believe that they are entitled to substantial upgrades. On the surface, they have a pretty good case since they are the top cable news network. But as this marketing burst is coming at a time when they are also the fastest declining network, cable operators should not be bullied into accepting sky high licensing fees. If Fox was stupid enough to lock themselves into low fees in their formative years, cablers should learn from that and not lock themselves into high fees while Fox is sinking.

This would be a good time to write your local cable company and stress that you are not willing to pay more to have continued access to Fox News. Any deal that they make with Fox must not result in an increase of your monthly fees. If that happens, you will quickly cancel and get a dish.

The end result of this is not to keep Fox off of the air. The cable companies are surely going to re-up with the current Nielsen leader. But you can have an impact on their profitability by giving your cable operator the ammunition to bargain Fox down. So sharpen those pencils and let your carrier know that you will not tolerate rate increases to fatten the wallets of a network you don’t even watch.

The train keeps-a-rollin all night long. All week-night long in the cable news ratings, that is.

The latest numbers for the November period show a continuation of a trend that has lasted all year. For ten of the last eleven months, Keith Olbermann’s Countdown has gained viewers while Bill O’Reilly’s Factor sheds them in droves. Countdown improved a whopping 66% compared to O’Reilly’s slump of -17%.

Here are the numbers for network performance in November 2006 as compared November 2005:

Once again, the only declines were posted by Fox. Even where Fox showed improvement, it ranked as the smallest gains of all the networks. The dismal finish by Fox occurred despite expectations for viewer gains due to the mid-term elections and their aftermath. The other networks were able to meet those expectations with strong growth.

Does this foreshadow a bleak winter winter for Fox? Yes, gawd-dammit, it does. And it’s about time.

The irresponsible, journalistically vacant, unethical, propagandizing that is the hallmark of Fox is obviously wearing thin with the American television audience. And as they sink, their desperation is leading them into ever more pathetic theocon-ambulisms. As they struggle to cling to their crumbling empire they resort to inanities like a pilot for a conservative Daily Show, or the memo that sought to console the newsroom ranks by reassurring them that…

“The elections and Rumsfeld’s resignation were a major event but not the end of the world. The war on terror goes on without interruption”

Feel better? I know I sure do.

Ratings for the cable news nets have been released and October 2006 to October 2005 comparisons again look sweet for Countdown.

MSNBC scored hefty gains driven by Olbermann’s 61% rise in viewers 25-54. His total viewer increase was 67%, while O’Reilly’s dropped (again) 22%. Countdown improved more than any of the other news programs. O’Reilly was the 2nd biggest decliner (after Greta). In fact, Olbermann gained more total viewers than all of the other shows combined.

Here are the network numbers for total viewers:

MSNBC chief, Dan Abrams, seems to be learning the right lessons:

“Keith Olbermann is the right person at the right time, and doing it in the right way. This is a really good sign for MSNBC on the whole. I think that we’ve found a voice to some degree.”

I think your audience agrees with you, Dan.

Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes was on the warpath back in June because of his network’s poor performance. Says Ailes:

“Anyone who displays launch-type intensity will continue to have a job at Fox News. Those who don’t will not. And that includes talent.”

Seems like an empty threat in as much as there is no talent at Fox. Be that as it may, Ailes must be firing up the nukes right about now. The August ratings (PDF) are out and, of the top 3 cable news networks, Fox alone has lost viewers. And not just an incremental loss, they are cratering.

Primetime – Persons 2+:

Primetime – 25-54:

What’s worse is that in at least eight consecutive months of year-to-year comparisons, Fox has shown declines and, again, is the only network to have accomplished that feat. The standout contributors to this debacle in August are Greta Van Susteren (-31%), Hannity & Colmes (-21%), and our boy O’Reilly (-15%). For those of you keeping score, Olberman’s Countdown increased 55% over it’s year ago number. So far this year, Olberman’s comparisons have been positive every month while O’Reilly’s have been negative.

As I’ve pointed out in previous analyses, we need to view these figures in context. Fox is still the runaway leader in cable news, but trends are not insignificant. And as CNN’s special on bin Laden last week demonstrated, there is an audience for quality news programming. That’s got to be bad news for Fox.