Glenn Beck’s Ratings Sink into Irrelevancy

Posted by on December 2, 2010 at 5:37 pm. 26 Comments :

If there is one thing for which Glenn Beck deserves some measure of credit, it is his ability to promote himself and inflate his influence on the media, and in society, outside of all proportion to reality. The way he is portrayed in the press would give a neutral observer the impression that he is the most beloved public figure in the country with a growing following that dwarfs his contemporaries.

Of course the truth is that Beck is hated as much as he is loved. And in most polls the highest percentage of respondents are those that have no opinion or haven’t even heard of him.

The most recent ratings for his Fox News program bear out these statistics. Even though Beck gets far more attention than his Fox colleagues, his program is not a top performer and it is not growing. In fact, it is the network’s biggest loser.


In the past year Beck has dropped from 2.67 million total viewers to 2.30 million, down 14%. In the key 25-54 year old advertising demographic it’s even worse. He sank from 678,000 to 434,000, a drop of 36%. Keep in mind that the mid-term elections this year ought to have made his program more pertinent and compelling to his audience rather than less, yet he still underperformed last year’s numbers by a huge margin.

Beck’s deteriorating numbers came on the heels of his vaunted “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington, DC. Apparently that did nothing to restore his ranking. And two months later Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rubbed salt in his wounds by hosting an even bigger rally. It is also notable that in the same time frame both Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow improved their ratings.

During the past year Beck trotted out some unusual news that some cynics may regard as attempts to boost viewership. On one program he announced that he might be going blind. A few weeks later he disclosed that he was being treated for some sort of nerve ailment that resulted in a loss of feeling in his hands and feet (the Stigmata?). He has said nothing about these traumatic incidents since.

The scope of Beck’s ratings failure is not trivial. his decline far exceeds those of his Fox comrades. He routinely places fourth in the Fox lineup behind O’Reilly, Baier, and Hannity. That is pretty low for someone who is being hailed as the network’s star attraction. His ratings are a full 40% below Bill O’Reilly, who doesn’t get nearly as much press as Beck, at least since Beck came aboard. That’s gotta buzz Billo’s beak.

Along with Beck’s dismal ratings picture, he is also a money drain on Fox News. Over 140 American advertisers have pulled their ads from Beck’s show. In the UK Beck has been airing for months with no advertising at all.

You have to wonder why Fox News keeps Beck around when he is neither a source of ratings or revenue. And increasingly he is the network’s greatest source of embarrassment. His ravings are becoming ever more distant from reality (see Glenn Beck Unhinged for copious documentation). The range of his dementia begins with the eminently mockable frightfest he hosted surrounding his assertion that the government is plotting to induce mass starvation via the Food Safety Act. But just when he seems like the rodeo clown he calls himself, he veers into the repulsive bigotry and overt anti-Semitism of his disgraceful and lie-riddled series on George Soros. It would be naive to dismiss him as the joke he often appears to be when he is also capable of incendiary hate speech that has already incited real world violence.

There are only two plausible excuses for keeping someone like Beck on the air:

1) Beck represents the views of the people who employ him and their determination to advance those views supersedes their obligation to produce popular or profitable programming. That would fit the profiles of both Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. Ailes is unambiguously partisan and has crammed the Fox lineup with staunch conservative activists in the role of reporters and hosts. At least four potential candidates for the GOP nomination for president are currently on the Fox News payroll. Murdoch has demonstrated his preference for ideology over profit by deficit financing many of his notoriously biased news operations for many years. And the disclosure of his million dollar donations (via News Corp) to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Republican Governor’s Association remove all doubt as to his activist intentions.

2) Beck’s bosses are afraid to terminate him due to the rabid idolatry of his fan base. Even though Beck’s audience is relatively small and shrinking, they are an unstable lot and they would make a fierce roar of anguish were Fox to cut Beck loose. Whether that would manifest violently with threats to the network or its principles is unknown, but not implausible. They would certainly create a media maelstrom. The cultish worship of Beck approaches Messianic proportions. He even speculates on air that he is the target of death threats and that evil, clandestine forces are gathering to silence (crucify?) him. Just imagine how he would spin his cancellation as persecution, and all of his disciples would believe it.

If the suits at Fox News had any integrity they would cancel Beck tomorrow. That’s how television networks work. You bring in either money or viewers or you get the axe. It’s not censorship. It’s called a free market, and I thought right-wingers were supposed to support that. News Corp and Fox executives have a fiduciary duty to shareholders to return profit on their investments, but they are shirking that duty for either ideological of cowardly reasons.

Perhaps it is the shareholders who should revolt and demand that action be taken to restore fiscal responsibility. Either Beck goes or the brass that are too incompetent to do what’s right and necessary do. I’m holding my breath starting . . . . . . . . Now.

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Fight The FCC’s Phony Net Neutrality Plan

Posted by on December 2, 2010 at 10:43 am. 5 Comments :

One of the most promising signs of the early Obama administration was the appointment of Julius Genachowski to chair the FCC. There was significant hope that the days of coddling Big Media and permitting more consolidation and concentration of corporate influence was about to end. However, it is now turning into one of the most disappointing appointments as Genachowski appears to be caving on Network Neutrality, one of the most important free speech issues of this decade.

The New York Times is reporting that “Genachowski has decided not to use the commission’s telephone regulatory powers to govern broadband Internet service.” He also seems to be prepared to allow Internet service providers to engage in “paid prioritization,” which could lead to favoritism on the part of the ISPs and discrimination against smaller, independent web enterprises.

This is not exactly the sort of plan that was promised by candidate Obama in 2008. It charts a course that smothers efforts to increase broadband access while giving more control of the Internet to monopoly-minded corporations. Josh Silver of FreePress.net summarizes the ill-effects of this proposal as “a shiny jewel for companies like AT&T and Comcast.”

Net Neutrality has been a target of right-wing disinformation for several years. They wrongly portray it as anything from a new Fairness Doctrine to something out of Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia. That is how obsessed they are with defeating a proposal whose actual purpose is to protect a free and open Internet. That’s how obsessed they are with advancing the interests of their wealthy benefactors at the expense of the American people.

This administration has been notably weak-kneed when it comes to anything remotely controversial. They demonstrated this tendency to bail with Van Jones, Shirley Sherrod, the Public Option in the health care debate, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and presently the matter of extending tax cuts to the wealthy. It seems that any opposition to common sense progressive proposals is met with complete surrender. We can’t let liars like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh drive the debate. And we can’t let the White House cave in to pressure from factions that represent greed and corporate power.

You can fight back by signing this petition from Bold Progressives to urge the FCC to protect free speech online by supporting Net Neutrality. And here’s another from Credo Action. Or you can use this form to contact the FCC directly and submit your comments. But you only have a couple of weeks, so act soon. You will surely regret it if you don’t and you later find that you can’t access some of your favorite web sites because they were blocked by ISPs because they couldn’t pay the toll.


Glenn Beck And The Doctrine Of Nazi Kittens

Posted by on December 1, 2010 at 3:01 pm. 1 Comments :

The Fox News Professor of Practical Dementia delivered a particularly thought provoking lecture today on his radio university. I dare you to make sense of it:

Glenn Beck: This is the oldest argument in the progressive movement. It is the argument between, not state capitalism, because this isn’t capitalism.

This is a new sort of capitalism. No it’s not! It is socialism. No, it’s state capitalism. No it’s not! Put the Thesaurus down. It is socialism, not capitalism.

And when you say “state” you mean “national.” National Socialism. That is what Mussolini and Hitler did. National Socialism. State Capitalism. They’ve changed the name.

Notice that Beck never actually tells us what the old progressive argument is. He just wonders off to build some sort of imaginary bridge between progressives and Nazis.

Let me take a stab at it. In this utterly incoherent rant, I think Beck is attempting to argue that the word “state” is synonymous with the word “national,” and the word “capitalism” is synonymous with the word “socialism.” Really? Don’t stop to think about it. Just keep listening.

Beck continues by saying that if you replace the word “state” in “State Capitalism” with the word “national,” and then replace the word “capitalism” with “socialism,” you have “National Socialism,” or, as they are better known, Nazis.

Hitler CatAll of this is somehow associated with progressives who advocate neither State Capitalism nor National Socialism. Again, I implore you, don’t stop to think about it. Just accept that progressives are Nazis by virtue of Beck’s word replacement exercise.

Now try it yourself at home. Take any phrase, i.e. “Furry Kitten.” Now replace the word “furry” with “national,” and the word “kitten” with “socialism.” There you have it.

Unassailable evidence that furry kittens are Nazis.


How To Get A Job At Fox News

Posted by on December 1, 2010 at 12:49 pm. NO Comments :

For any aspiring reporters who don’t care about journalism but want to advance their careers as celebrity hacks, an enterprising anchorman from Washington, DC, has generously blazed the trail for you to future success.

Doug McKelway was anchoring the news desk at WJLA in Washington until he allowed his right-wing partisan views to seep into his so-called reporting. That led to some harsh words with his boss at the station, and eventually his termination.

Not to worry. Roger Ailes probably has Google alerts set for disgraced reporters who get fired for rightist bias. And, wouldn’t you know it, McKelway has been hired by Fox News. He is following in the footsteps of Juan Williams who was terminated by NPR for making offensive comments in his role as a contributor to Fox.

McKelway’s credentials also include another character trait valued by Fox: hostility. In an interview with a gay rights activist McKelway expressed his desire to, “take you outside and give you a punch across the face.” McKelway may have picked up that tactic from Fox reporter Charles Leaf, who once assaulted a councilwoman he was attempting to interview and, on another occasion, spewed homophobic obscenities and tried to attack an interview subject.

Leaf is still on the Fox payroll but hasn’t shown up for work lately because he is in jail awaiting trial on charges of sexually molesting a four year old girl. McKelway hasn’t employed that tactic yet (that we know of). But that oversight didn’t harm his opportunity for employment with Fox.

So good luck job-seekers. If you’re an abusive, bigot, with perverted tendencies, your future looks bright at Fox News.


Fox Nation And The Right-Wing Embrace Of Censorship

Posted by on November 30, 2010 at 2:50 pm. NO Comments :

The release of some 250,000 documents by WikiLeaks has stirred up a hornets nest of protest from the rightist martinets of virtue. There have been calls to shut down the WikiLeaks web site, to arrest its principals, and even to execute those responsible for treason. But what it all amounts to in the end is that the right-wing extremists just simply abhor a free press.

The Fox Nation has been consumed with the issue, promoting it beyond all other news items. The economy, jobs, Iraq, Afghanistan, tax cuts, etc., have all taken a back seat to WikiLeaks. As of this writing the front page of the Fox Nation has six separate articles on this subject.


It is impossible to ignore the fact that in their haste to criticize the WikiLeaks document dump, the Fox Nationalists frame their criticism in a barrage of animus directed at President Obama. The whole thing is somehow his fault. What’s more, they condemn his response to it as “incompetent” and “gutless.” Sarah Palin and Bill O’Reilly are “livid” – and Lord knows we can’t have that.

But here’s the thing: If Obama had taken a hardball approach to this, cutting off access to the WikiLeaks web site and arresting those involved, the reaction from the right would be to assail him as a tyrant intent on imposing censorship on independent media. They would be shocked that an American president would assert such unprecedented control over a private enterprise. It would be portrayed as fascist or Stalinist oppression (take your pick). So either way, the right would engage in a fevered bashing of the President. It’s what they do.

Since the President has accommodated the right by taking a measured approach to ascertain the facts and proceed with due diligence, the right is free to wail about such imaginary violations as treason. But what they are really condemning is freedom of thought and expression. And it isn’t the first time. During the Bush administration a Republican congress voted to condemn the New York Times for publishing a story that revealed the government’s unlawful spying into the banking activities of American citizens. If Obama’s administration were to propose such an intrusion he would be castigated as a dictator bent on destroying America (again).

Make no mistake, the WikiLeaks affair is being used as a cudgel with which to hammer the President. But it is also being used as en excuse to censor independent sources of information and to intimidate anyone who entertains the notion of revealing to the American people what is being done by government in their name. It doesn’t matter if it’s an obscure, off-shore web site or the New York Times. The right is intent on suppressing free expression. They prove it again and again.


UNHINGED: Glenn Beck Thinks Government Wants To Starve You

Posted by on November 30, 2010 at 9:57 am. 7 Comments :

Glenn Beck UnhingedIn a rant that raises Glenn Beck’s delusional factor to unprecedented heights, he is now accusing the United States government of seeking to control the people via food safety programs with an ultimate goal of deliberate starvation. If you think that is hyperbole, here are his exact words: “This is about control and, in the end, starvation.”

This hallucinatory screed was spurred by a Senate bill (S.510) that would give the FDA additional authority to address food safety matters. The bill has received bipartisan support in response to the numerous cases of food recalls the past year (peanut butter, spinach, cookie dough, etc.) due to pathogens like E.coli and salmonella that have sickened thousands of Americans and led to dozens of deaths. Beck shrugs this off by asking “Is there a big problem that I don’t know of?”

No Glenn, there isn’t. You DO know, you’re just lying about it. [FYI (pdf): Each year, about 76 million people contract a food-borne illness in the United States; about 325,000 require hospitalization; and about 5,000 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] And that’s not all you’re lying about.

Beck: Do you know where the FDA’s Deputy commissioner for foods used to work? Just a wild coincidence. The Monsanto company. And guess who the second largest holder was, you know, last quarter, the shares of the Monsanto corporation…George Soros.

Not true. George Soros is not now, and has never been, the second largest holder of Monsanto stock. He has never even been in the top ten. His fund does own approximately $312 million worth of Monsanto stock, which is less than 7% of the $5 billion fund.

As for the FDA official whom Beck didn’t bother to name, it is Michael Taylor, who did indeed work for Monsanto for three years – ten years ago! For the 35 years before and after that he worked for either the FDA or Department of Agriculture. He was also a professor at George Washington University. It appears he took a short break from government service to cash in as a lobbyist. I won’t defend that but, the bottom line is that, whatever his association with Monsanto, it wasn’t recent enough to reasonably assert that he is still lobbying on their behalf.

On a side note, it’s interesting that Beck should take such an antagonistic tone toward Monsanto when his employer engaged in a notorious and unusual defense of the company a while back. In 1997, a couple of local Fox reporters, Steve Wilson and Jane Akre, produced a story on rBGH, a synthetic growth hormone developed by Monsanto that boosts milk production and is associated with an increased risk of cancer. After a letter writing campaign by Monsanto to Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, disputing the story and hinting at a lawsuit, the story was shelved and the reporters were fired, despite all the evidence that the story was accurate.

In subsequent litigation Fox argued that under the First Amendment broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on public airwaves. Fox has since taken full advantage of that right by lying and distorting the news every single day. And their lead distorter is, of course, Glenn Beck.

[This Just In:] Despite Beck’s urging that his viewers call Congress and protest, the Senate overwhelmingly passed the Food Safety Act 73-25, including 15 Republican votes. That still means that a majority of the GOP voted against the bill, but it is more bipartisanship than has been seen in the past two years.

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Sarah Palin’s Media Persecution Complex

Posted by on November 27, 2010 at 12:06 pm. 11 Comments :

Last week the blogiverse had a field day with Sarah Palin’s gaffe wherein she told Glenn Beck that we must stand with our “North” Korean allies. It was a rather trivial spurt of mockery that was more entertainment than news.

Palin’s reaction, however, was a massive escalation that revealed her acute sensitivity to criticism. In fact, her reaction tells us much more about her than the gaffe that started it all. On her Facebook page (because the “mama grizzly” is still too afraid to peek out of her online cave to talk to real people) Palin complained that the media…

“…couldn’t resist the temptation to turn a simple one word slip-of-the-tongue of mine into a major political headline.”

As Media Matters reports, this was hardly a major political story. It was not reported at all by ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, PBS, NPR, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and most other major news outlets. What else is left that would qualify this as a major story of any kind?

So when a bunch of bloggers find humor in Palin’s faux pas, she interprets that as another example of the media unfairly assaulting her. Even though the media she’s fingering had nothing to do with it. It is entirely in her warped imagination. And she advances her complaint to suggest that a string of bloopers by the President were not treated the same as her own miscues. The only problem with that is that his muffs received every bit as much attention as hers did, if not more. It should also be noted that, unlike her flub, none of Obama’s exhibited a potentially disastrous ignorance of foreign affairs.

You have to wonder to whom Palin is referring when she said “Let’s hope that perhaps, just maybe, they might get it right next time.” Perhaps if the media ever gets to ask her a question it might be who “they” are. Although this incident should not diminish the other cases of persecution Palin suffers at the hands of the “lamestream” media. Take this barrage of venom for example:

“Just how Sarah is Sarah Palin’s Alaska, her new hit reality show on the TLC network? It’s soooo flippin’ Sarah, as Sarah would say. And it’s soooo Alaska, which Palin pronounces ‘A-LASK-ahhhh.’ She repeats this on the show over and over again, as though we might forget where she’s from otherwise. She says it in that chirpy honk that, to her legions of fans, represents the music of Mom, apple pie, and flyover country. To her legions of enemies, it is the sound of gum smacking and syntax breaking. As Palin intones in the show’s opening, ‘A-LASK-ahhhh—I love this state like I love my family.’ Except that she didn’t give her family up after governing it for two-and-a-half years, so that she could get a Fox News contract, and make 100 grand per speech, and write two books in a year, and drag her entire family onto a tacky reality show.”

My mistake. That wasn’t the lamestream media. That was Matt Labash in the ultra-conservative Weekly Standard. But Palin is certain to find a way to blame this on liberals in the media who somehow bewitched Labosh and his editors into publishing this screed. No doubt George Soros had something to do with it.


Salon’s War Room: The Thirty Worst Pundits

Posted by on November 24, 2010 at 10:31 pm. 2 Comments :

As with all “Best/Worst Of…” lists, you can argue over names that were included, left off, or ranked incorrectly. But all in all, this is a pretty good list from Salon.com:

About The Hack Thirty

We’re listing the worst columnists and cable news commentators America has to offer. Think of this as our all-star team — of the most predictable, dishonest and just plain stupid pundits in the media.

1. Richard Cohen
2. Mark Halperin
3. Thomas Friedman
4. David Broder
5. Marty Peretz
6. Marc Thiessen
7. Jonah Goldberg
8. Maureen Dowd
9. Laura Ingraham
10. Peggy Noonan		 11. George Will
12. John Fund
13. Roger Simon
14. David Ignatius
15. Mort Zuckerman
16. Michael Barone
17. Bill Kristol
18. Tina Brown
19. Joe Klein
20. Howard Fineman		 21. S.E. Cupp
22. Tucker Carlson
23. Howard Kurtz
24. Dana Milbank
25. Mickey Kaus
26. Jeffrey Goldberg
27. Pat Caddell
28. Andrew Malcolm
29. Matt Bai
30. David Brooks

Some of my additions would be Pat Buchanan, Monica Crowley, Alex Castellanos, Bernie Goldberg, Stephen Moore, Charles Krauthammer, Dick Morris, Juan Williams, Judith Miller, and Ann Coulter. I’m sure there are more I’ve mentally blocked. Feel free to submit your own.


Tom Delay: Dancing Behind Bars

Posted by on November 24, 2010 at 7:02 pm. NO Comments :

Tom Delay GUILTY!

Jury convicts Tom DeLay in money laundering trial

AUSTIN, Texas – Former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay – once one of the most powerful and feared Republicans in Congress – was convicted Wednesday on charges he illegally funneled corporate money to Texas candidates in 2002.

Jurors deliberated for 19 hours before returning guilty verdicts against DeLay on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He faces up to life in prison on the money laundering charge.

I don’t really have anything to add. Just that I hope his cronies in Texas don’t water this down to a slap on his corrupt wrist.


Yet Another Poll Reveals The Tea Party Craze Is A Fraud

Posted by on November 24, 2010 at 3:02 pm. 16 Comments :

Grand Old Tea PartyDespite all the evidence of repeated surveys, the media continues to treat the Tea Party as if it were an influential player in contemporary politics. They salivate at plastering their pages and airwaves with red-meat melodrama that lacks relevance or substance. That’s how they end up so pathetically far off course whenever another poll is taken that casts the Tea Party in a realistic light. And that’s what the Associated Press just did:

Tea party backers fashion themselves as “we the people,” but polls show the Republican Party’s most conservative and energized voters are hardly your average crowd.

According to an Associated Press-GfK Poll this month, 84 percent who call themselves tea party supporters don’t like how President Barack Obama is handling his job – a view shared by just 35 percent of all other adults. Tea partiers are about four times likelier than others to back repealing Obama’s health care overhaul and twice as likely to favor renewing tax cuts for the highest-earning Americans.

Exit polls of voters in this month’s congressional elections reveal similar gulfs. Most tea party supporters – 86 percent – want less government intrusion on people and businesses, but only 35 percent of other voters said so. Tea party backers were about five times likelier to blame Obama for the country’s economic ills, three times likelier to say Obama’s policies will be harmful and twice as apt to see the country on the wrong track.

These aren’t subtle shadings between tea party backers and the majority of Americans, who don’t support the movement; they’re Grand Canyon-size chasms.

My only response to this latest revelation of the Tea Party’s impotence is to quote myself the last couple of times this was revealed:

Dec 19, 2009: The fact that the Tea Baggers have failed to create a significant presence despite being bankrolled by some of the biggest and wealthiest AstroTurf lobbying organizations in the country (i.e. FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity), and having the promotional backing of Fox News, illustrates just how unappealing most Americans regard that brand of disruptive griping.

Oct 5, 2010: [T]he Tea Party is a fringe cadre of extremists who have little in common with average Americans. So why do they get so much attention in the press? Well, partly because the press loves controversy, even if they have to invent it. And partly because the Republican Party is anxious to hitch its wagon to the Tea Party express in hopes of enhancing their electoral prospects. But the main reason the Tea Party gets so much attention in the press is because they have their own press (i.e. Fox News, talk radio, etc.) that pours out their propaganda in a flood of fury, fear, and foreboding.

There is plenty of data available for the press to frame the issues honestly. They just seem to prefer spinning fables. A survey released earlier this week showed that a majority of Americans support extension of the Bush-era tax cuts only for those earning less than $250,000. It also shows that a majority want to keep the new health care bill as it is or expand it. And this is after months of harsh, and mostly false, rhetoric bashing these policies from Tea Partiers and their media accomplices.

It’s been two years now. Is the media ever going to report honestly on this phony “movement.” You would think they would tire of embarrassing themselves over and over again.