Posted by Mark NC on November 19, 2017 at 3:11 pm.
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A few weeks ago Fox News had to realign their schedule due to all the sexual perverts being terminated. First they lost Bill O’Reilly, and then Eric Bolling. They also lost Megyn Kelly, who was a victim of the sexual abuse from both O’Reilly and Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. These scandals gutted most of the network’s primetime lineup. Today they are left with newcomers Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham.
Sean Hannity is the lone holdover and he’s not not exactly holding his own. For one thing, his support for the pedophile Republican senate candidate in Alabama, Roy Moore, is costing him advertisers (see Stop Hannity). His fear and desperation resulting from that caused a major meltdown on Sunday as revealed in a series of hysterical tweets. But his problems don’t end there.
Last week Rachel Maddow pulled off another ratings victory over her new competition. Not that they are competing for the same viewers, but having a Nielsen win during your time period is an important factor in the television marketplace. Maddow’s strength in the ratings against the biggest draw on Fox News is a significant development and a dire dilemma for Hannity.
Maddow and Hannity actually split the week with each winning two nights (Maddow was preempted on Friday by a special program). However, the average over the four nights favored Maddow. That’s because her wins were with larger margins, and where she came in second it was close. All of this points to the weakness of Hannity’s program despite being the top rated show on Fox.
Maddow’s success has had a positive effect on the rest of MSNBC’s primetime. The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell took on Fox’s new Laura Ingraham show and beat her three out of four nights. The same was true for The Eleventh Hour with Brian Williams in it’s battle with another new entry for Fox, Fox News @ Night. The only weak spot for MSNBC is All In with Chris Hayes. But although it isn’t delivering big audience numbers, it has become a sort of Emmy magnet. Hopefully over time viewers will appreciate the high quality of the show and tune in more.
As for Fox, clearly their replacement programs are not performing particularly well. But the bigger problem is that the cornerstone of the schedule, Hannity, is not only failing to maintain the network’s long-time dominance, but it’s also less viable financially as its advertisers fall away. In their last quarterly report, Fox News disappointed stockholders with a seventeen percent drop in ad revenue.
Fox’s troubles are not going to go away anytime soon. Their audience shows signs of weariness with knee-jerk, right-wing propaganda. Some of them want to know what is actually happening in the world, not the Fox News manufactured version of it. And the glassy-eyed ultra-conservatives are starting to drift off to other news outlets like Breitbart that aim to out flank Fox from the right. Even the efforts of Donald Trump, who has been feverishly hyping Fox, have not helped. It’s likely that the fate of Fox News and Trump are going to be tightly bound together in a Titanic sinking. We just have to wait until the iceberg (Russia? Mueller? Sex crimes?) takes its inevitable toll.
A few weeks ago Fox News was forced to make some drastic programming changes. They had to terminate Bill O’Reilly due to multiple allegations (and settlements) of sexual harassment. They should have seen that coming since they renewed his contract with knowledge of a massive $32 million payoff. And there was another $13 million to half a dozen other victims. Fox News also fired Eric Bolling, the host of the newly launched The Specialists, for sexual misconduct. Do you notice a pattern?
With these cancellations there were holes in the schedule that needed to be plugged. Consequently, Fox News decided to move Sean Hannity’s 10:00 pm show into O’Reilly’s slot at 9:00 pm. This put him into a head-to-head battle with MSNBC star Rachel Maddow. It also firmed up Fox’s primetime as three hours of fawning Trump-fluffing, beginning with Tucker Carlson, then Hannity, and the all new Laura Ingraham Angle. It’s been four weeks since Hannity’s move and the ratings already have a story to tell.
Hannity is, without a doubt, Donald Trump’s most cloying sycophant on Fox News. He serves as an advisor to the White House and relentlessly defends any and all Trump atrocities. As for Trump, he posts frequent promotional tweets about Hannity (seventeen just since the inauguration) and has sat for three interviews as President.
Hannity front loaded the first week in his new time slot with high profile guests chosen to spike ratings. They included Fox favorites like Steve Bannon, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh. The second and third weeks, however, were skewed by coverage of the tragic shooting in Las Vegas and its aftermath. But now, as the new schedule settles in, Maddow has returned to the top spot. The hopes Fox News had for toppling Maddow by moving Hannity into direct competition have not succeeded, at least so far.
One of the consequences of that failure is that other Fox News programs are getting scared and beginning to attack Maddow in an effort to blunt her success. For example, Fox and Friends did a whole segment on Maddow’s analysis of the death of four Green Berets in Niger. They never laid a glove on her. In fact, they never even bothered to substantively counter anything she said. They just made catty comments about her demeanor and complained that she has opinions. But just the fact that they talked about her is evidence they are scared. If they didn’t think that Maddow was having an impact, Fox would have ignored her. And she is definitely having an impact.
For the week of October 16, Maddow decisively beat her new competition, Sean Hannity. In the critical 24-54 demographic, she won three days out of five outright, and took the whole week’s average. On Wednesday she had the highest rated program on all of cable news. Her powerful leadin helped The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell to win his time period as well. Even Brian Williams’ The Eleventh Hour came out on top. As a result of these victories MSNBC won the entire week in primetime.
Television ratings are a fluid measure of popularity and can be influenced by many factors. Breaking news, popular guest bookings, and competing programs across the dial can shuffle the numbers. But the performance of Maddow’s show after being put to the test by Fox’s highest ratings draw is significant. It shows that quality journalism will find its audience. And even if Fox News has a built-in cult status for tunnel-blind partisans on the right, it isn’t enough to overcome well produced, researched, and presented reporting that is honest and touches the lives of all Americans.
The rapid rise of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has stunned many in the cable news business. Her show has risen from modest beginnings to dominate her field. And she has achieved something that was thought unthinkable a couple of years ago: beating Fox News. And she has been doing that handily for several months.
There is a segment of television news consumers who are clearly interested in thoughtful, well-researched journalism. Maddow’s brand of intelligent, fact-based discourse is proving to be more popular than Fox News style blather, bellowing, and bullshit. The negativity and ultra-conservative bias that defines Fox News might be wearing thin. Plus, they have the unenviable job of defending Donald Trump’s infantile outbursts, humiliating ignorance, and unpopular positions on nearly everything.
With all of that in mind, it isn’t that surprising that Maddow has taken the cable news crown. What’s surprising is the scope of her victory and its continuing acceleration. Forbes reports the newest Nielsen numbers saying that:
“The MSNBC host just hit a milestone for MSNBC, with her 9 p.m. hour, The Rachel Maddow Show, finishing the third quarter of 2017 as the No. 1 cable news show on television. It’s the first time any MSNBC show has finished first in the Nielsen ratings for an entire quarter.
“Maddow hit her highest ratings among total viewers (2.7 million) and in the advertiser-coveted demographic of adults 25-54 (606,000). That represents an increase of 75% compared to the third quarter of 2016 (total viewers), and 65% (adults 25-54).”
The numbers for Maddow were reflected throughout the MSNBC schedule. Their total day growth was “up +41 percent in viewers and up +27 percent in the demo.” That contrasts with a Fox News decline“year-over-year in total viewers, down -3 percent in total day and down -12 percent in total viewers.” Ironically, Fox’s best performing program was “Shepard Smith Reporting” which was up +19 percent. Lately Smith is the sole voice of sanity on Fox and a frequent critic of Trump. Which is to say that he reports truthfully.
Speaking of Trump, he isn’t taking this news well. In fact, he’s avoiding the reality of it entirely. On Thursday he retweeted his friend Bill O’Reilly congratulating Sean Hannity for a short-term ratings bump.
Hannity crushing MSNBC at 9. Good for him! Check the No Spin News on https://t.co/rryWmyXe7C. Killing England a huge bestseller – thank you!
The disgust of seeing the sexual predator Trump, promoting fellow deviant O’Reilly, was jarring and repulsive. Particularly since this was O’Reilly’s first time back on Fox News since he was terminated for sexually harassing his colleagues and guests. As for Hannity, he just moved to a new time period directly competing with Maddow. So he front-loaded his first week with a bevy of right-wing icons like Steve Bannon, Paul Ryan, Rush Limbaugh, and O’Reilly. He can’t be expected to keep up that pace and his ratings will likely sink back to their prior levels. So any boasting about the numbers for a couple of days is premature and pales in comparison to Maddow’s quarterly trouncing of Hannity and Fox.
But this is all that they have to hang on to. Maddow is a certified success who is putting Hannity to shame. And the fact that Trump is lowering himself to posting TV ratings results is further proof of his unfitness for the presidency. The nation is juggling multiple crises including hurricane catastrophes in Puerto Rico, Florida, and Texas. Trump’s third attempt to kill ObamaCare just went down in flames. He’s now peddling a tax reform scam that will benefit the wealthy and hurt everyone else. He seems intent on starting a nuclear war with North Korea. Our elections systems have been compromised by foreign enemies.
Trump himself is at risk for prosecution and possible impeachment for his involvement with Russia, both politically and financially. And now he’s interrupted his racist posting on the NFL to lie about television ratings. We don’t have a president anymore. We have a traitorous, wannabe tabloid hack who would be better suited as a correspondent for the Russian version of TMZ. And even that would be a stretch for him.
Posted by Mark NC on September 24, 2017 at 10:57 am.
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The embarrassing spectacle of Donald Trump’s feud with popular sports figures continues to heat up. It began several days ago with Trump lashing out at NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and NBA star Steph Curry. These and other public figures have been actively expressing themselves regarding civil rights and racism in America. And what they get for exercising their First Amendment rights is ignorant insults from the White House.
In response to Trump’s Twitter tantrums, many more players are speaking out. What’s more, they have been joined by their coaches and team owners. Among those castigating Trump are friends and political supporters like former Buffalo Bills coach Rex Ryan, who is “pissed off.” Patriots owner, and Trump donor, Robert Kraft, said he is “disappointed” with Trump. On Sunday morning players for the Jaguars and the Ravens took a knee, joined by coaches and owners. The entire Steelers team will not take the field for the national anthem.
Trump’s ill-advised tirade is producing a backlash that any sensible person could have predicted. He has inspired more people to protest than ever would have had he kept his mouth shut. And the criticism directed at him points out the obvious racist overtones in his outburst. For instance, many observers have noticed that Trump called protesting athletes “sons of bitches,” but praised white supremacists in Charlottesville as “very fine people.” It’s apparent that the President has a case of tunnel blindness that prohibits him from seeing reality. And that may explain his latest tweets on Sunday morning:
If NFL fans refuse to go to games until players stop disrespecting our Flag & Country, you will see change take place fast. Fire or suspend!
First of all, it is unprecedented that a president of the United States would call for a boycott against American enterprises on purely political grounds. He is advocating financial harm and the loss of jobs for businesses and citizens who have done nothing more than employ free speech to lawfully and peacefully express their opinions. Furthermore, he is calling for Americans to be fired for constitutionally protected activities. Clearly Trump has no understanding of American values as he demonstrates his overtly anti-American position. But he wasn’t finished with this juvenile tantrum:
…NFL attendance and ratings are WAY DOWN. Boring games yes, but many stay away because they love our country. League should back U.S.
Trump totally skids off the rails with this criticism of the NFL’s ratings. He recently misrepresented the TV ratings as being “massively” lower. That’s a lie. They are modestly lower. And the reasons have more to do with the evolving state of television than with player protests. But what makes this criticism so absurd is that Trump’s own ratings have broken records for descending into an abyss. No president has ever had lower approval ratings at this point in his presidency. And he is bringing the whole Republican Party down with him.
By his own standard, therefore, Trump is “disrespecting our flag and country.” The American people “stay away [from him] because they love our country. They should boycott this presidency, and he should be fired. It’s fair to say that given the choice, voters would choose to keep the NFL over this failure of a president. And his most recent abhorrent behavior only solidifies the distaste and distrust they have for him. If there’s one thing that Trump has succeeded in, it’s getting people to join together in their hatred for him.
There have been innumerable examples of Fox News airing false reports in an effort to misinform their viewers. A recent example just within the past week alleged that President Obama recruited British spies to conduct surveillance on Donald Trump’s campaign. Fox’s senior judicial analyst, Andrew Napolitian, made the claim without any supporting evidence. The network’s news division later refuted the report and put Napolitano on an indefinite leave. But that was after the story had been disseminated worldwide, creating an international incident. Even Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer (Fibby Spice) cited the fake news during a White House press briefing.
However, another way of shaping an ignorant electorate is to refrain from covering important events. The choice of what not to cover is just as significant as what to cover. And on Tuesday Fox News demonstrated their determination to deny their audience information that is unarguably newsworthy.
The House Intelligence Committee’s hearings on Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election were broadcast live by most news networks. Testimony by FBI Director James Comey revealed for the first time that the FBI was investigating Trump and his associates. The proceedings were unusually compelling for a congressional hearing. And the proof of that came when Fox News decided to cease coverage of the hearings to host a panel of right-wing talking heads instead.
Fox was the only network that interrupted the live broadcast. And by doing so they deprived their viewers of first hand knowledge of what was happening at the hearings. What’s worse is that they replaced the hearings with conservative pundits providing a blatantly biased analysis. It was a deliberate programming strategy designed to advance the messaging of an embattled White House.
Unfortunately for Fox News, it may not have worked this time. Ratings for the cable news networks show that when Fox cut away from the hearings they lost about 29 percent of their audience. That’s a massive shift by viewers who were obviously disappointed by Fox’s programming decision. What’s more, viewers were plainly following the hearings to other channels. The ratings for CNN and MSNBC both spiked after Fox cut away.
This tells us that the American people are acutely interested in this matter. They want to know more about the potentially treasonous activities of their president. By suppressing that information Fox succeeded only in alienating their audience and further eroding their credibility. Plus, they probably don’t want to send their viewers off to competing networks.
The Trump administration has brought newfound prosperity to liberal programming. The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC has toppled Fox from its perch atop the ratings hill. She has won her time period for the past two weeks straight. Saturday Night Live, despite Trump’s insulting tweets (or because of them) has seen its best ratings in years. Stephen Colbert’s Late Show is now leading his late night talk show competition.
All of this suggests that Americans are hungry for honest reporting. They are tired of Fox’s propaganda and the phony “balance” sought by CNN and other conventional news outlets. They want the press to be skeptical when appropriate and aggressive when necessary. They know there’s something amiss in the Trump White House and they don’t want it papered over. And they are not going to sit still when a network like Fox decides that they don’t need to know what’s really going on. Fox News needs to adjust a new viewer mantra: We have remotes, and we’re prepared to use them.
The infamous ego of Donald Trump is going to take a severe blow when he gets wind of this. His highly anticipated maiden address to Congress may have enchanted much of the media, but the ratings reveal far less adoration than he will be comfortable with. Even with Brian Kilmeade of Fox News telling him that “you’ll have the biggest audience for a State of the Union-like address this year, bigger than any other year,” reality has a way of intervening.
The Nielsen ratings for Trump’s speech came in at about 48 million. That’s a respectable number for anyone else, but Trump is likely to pound a hole in the Oval Office wall when he finds out. The reason for his outrage will be that he failed to snag the top spot for such events. To make matters worse, he lost to both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “Compared to Obama’s first address in 2009, Trump’s pull is down by 8 percent.” Rankings for first-time speeches to Congress are – Clinton 1993: 66.9 million. Obama 2009: 52.4 million. Trump 2017: 48.0 million.
Knowing Trump, one of two reactions can be expected. Either he will lash out at Nielsen and the “fake” ratings establishment that is determined to destroy his presidency. Or he will simply insist that he had higher ratings and everyone tells him so. Then he’ll send Sean Spicer out to confirm it and yell at the press.
Trump flew into a rage after the election when results that showed Hillary Clinton received nearly three million more votes. Defying reality again, Trump insisted that he would have had more popular votes were it not for millions of illegal voters. Then when he delivered his inauguration speech he invented millions of attendees that were invisible to the cameras.
It goes without saying that Trump will be furious when he learns of his latest failure. His handlers may try to keep him from finding out, but someone on Twitter will probably spill the beans. Then just wait for all hell to break loose. Trump is failing in the field he knows best – TV. He previously mocked Arnold Schwarzenegger for not matching his ratings on the new Celebrity Apprentice. Let’s see if Arnold has anything to say about this.
Now that both of the presidential nominating conventions are over, we can take a look at how the American people felt about the proceedings with respect to their television viewing. The Nielsen ratings are in and they tell a story that may have an impact on the election and its results in November.
From the broadest perspective the Democrats scored a significant victory (which may explain why Donald Trump is now pretending that he had nothing to do with his own convention). The cumulative total viewers for all four nights, across ten broadcast and cable networks, during the Democratic National Convention (DNC) was 116.7 million. For the Republican National Convention (RNC) it was 100.7 million. The Democrats outright won the first three nights by at least five million viewers. On the fourth night Trump’s acceptance speech outdrew Hillary Clinton’s by a small margin of 1.6 million.
DNC
RNC
Day 1
28.4
23.0
Day 2
28.0
23.0
Day 3
27.0
19.8
Day 4
33.3
34.9
116.7
100.7
The fourth night of the DNC event requires some additional analysis. It is fair to say that the night when a candidate is making their acceptance speech has particular significance. They are the star attraction at these shows and the impressions they make can have a substantial impact. Consequently, it should raise one’s curiosity as to why the Democrats won every night except the one when Hillary Clinton was making her big speech.
The answer is not especially surprising. When the numbers are broken down by network, you’ll find that Trump drew a massive 9.4 million viewers for his speech on Fox News alone. The following week, by contrast, Clinton was watched by only three million viewers on Fox. There was no similar disparity on any other network.
Clearly the people who watch Fox News were inclined to tune in to see their favorite candidate, Donald Trump. And when it came time for Hillary Clinton to speak, Fox viewers simply tuned her out, preferring to remain steeped in their own partisan stupidity. Absent this warped variable, the average viewership of the convention’s fourth night again shows a healthy lead for the Democrats.
More importantly, it shows a decidedly unhealthy tendency for Republicans to deliberately shelter themselves from the real world and wallow in a pool of purposeful ignorance. This isn’t a new development. A couple of years ago Gallup conducted a study that identified the political leanings of the viewers of each network. It showed that fully 94% of respondents identified as Republican or leaning Republican said that Fox News is their main source for news. Conservatives chimed in at 79%. And a whopping 97% of those who do not approve of President Obama pledged their allegiance to Fox. None of the respondents on the left came within 30 points of that level of extreme partisanship.
What this tells us is that Fox News is virtually irrelevant to the political debate in America. They cater to a uniform community of right-wing zealots whose opinions are locked in place. So it makes no difference that Fox viewers didn’t watch Clinton’s speech because they wouldn’t vote for her anyway. In fact, they may have just been following orders from their master. Yesterday Donald Trump sent an email to supporters telling them not to watch Clinton on Thursday:
“Unless you want to be lied to, belittled, and attacked for your beliefs, don’t watch Hillary’s DNC speech tonight.”
That’s the sort of advice that you give to juveniles you can’t trust to make their own decisions. It’s advice that cripples ones ability to understand the world around them and makes them incapable of knowing how to respond to information that isn’t pre-chewed for them by autocratic demagogues. In other words, it’s advice that Fox News viewers would rush blindly to follow. And what makes this even more ludicrous is that Trump himself declined his own advice. After earlier saying that he was not going to watch Clinton’s speech, he confessed to an audience at a rally today that “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I watched it.”
Of course he did. How else would he know what lame insults to tweet in response? Trump’s ego would never permit him to avoid anything that someone might say about him, particularly if it’s critical. As an insecure bully he needs to have constant control of his surroundings so he can strike back when he feels he’s been maligned. These ratings results prove that he’s one of the losers he’s constantly accusing his opponents of being. But don’t expect him to acknowledge it. He’s probably preparing some tweets right now to smear the lefty radicals at Nielsen who he surely believes are deliberately sabotaging his campaign.
There is a rapidly escalating sense of desperation on the part of the Republican Party. More and more GOP politicians and pundits are publicly expressing their dismay, if not outright disgust, for Donald Trump as their nominee for president. Conservative radio talker Hugh Hewitt is even advocating that the party dump Trump at their convention next month or “get killed” in the November election.
Now there is evidence that it isn’t just the GOP that Trump’s hateful rhetoric and childish demeanor are bringing down. TVNewser is reporting that the Nielsen ratings for last Tuesday’s primary night show Fox News getting knocked off of their top tier status among cable news networks:
“CNN was No. 1 in the key A25-54 demo […] And in a rare occurrence, MSNBC topped Fox News in the demo in both prime time (8 p.m. – 11 p.m.) and extended coverage (7 p.m. – 2 a.m.) MSNBC finished No. 2 in total viewers from 10 – 1 a.m. ET.”
It’s one thing for CNN to rank first in the ratings, which they have done several times in the past year. But for Fox News to be losing to perennial third-placer MSNBC is a monumental failure that indicates much deeper problems for both the network and the Republican Party for which it shills. This upset on primary night is significant because it reveals that the television audience in general is keenly interested in Hillary Clinton’s victory and historic achievement as the first woman to be nominated for president by a major party. At the same time it shows that Fox’s viewers were too depressed to even tune in, except for the brief remarks made by Donald Trump and his new friend, the TelePrompter.
It should come as no surprise that Trump’s affect on Fox News has produced negative results. He has been perhaps the harshest critic of the network, despite the fact that they have coddled him and devoted more of their airtime to him than to any other candidate. For that generosity Trump unleashed a non-stop tirade against numerous Fox News personnel. As News Corpse reported in April:
Ordinarily, any Republican candidate would be conscious of the sway that Fox holds over the party and the fate of anyone hoping to rise up in it. But Trump, with an apparently reckless lack of concern, has spent much of the last nine months mercilessly battering the network and its staff. He said of Megyn Kelly that she “is the worst” and has a “terrible show.” He called Karl Rove a “total fool” and “a biased dope.” He said that George Will is a “broken down political pundit” and “boring.” Chris Stirewalt was deemed “one of the dumbest political pundits on television.” Trump laughed off Charles Krauthammer as “a totally overrated clown,” “a loser,” and “a dummy.” And wrapping up the whole network for his disapproval, he tweeted that he was “having a really hard time watching Fox News.” Then he called on his followers to boycott the network. He even went after one of the major shareholders of Fox’s parent corporation.
Now that Trump is the GOP’s nominee, his legions of glassy-eyed disciples are all too happy to obediently shun Fox News. And the rest of Fox’s audience is cowering under the covers, too afraid to turn on the television and be faced with the reality of an imploding Republican campaign and a Hillary Clinton presidency.
Trump’s contribution to the decline of both the Republican Party and its media mouthpiece, Fox News, is certain to exacerbate the anxiety of the nation’s right-wingers. This may not be what Sarah Palin meant when she called Trump“a golden wrecking ball.” But in an oddly ironic twist of fate, America’s Democrats and liberals might want to send The Donald a thank you note.
A new study by the Pew Research Center reveals some striking generational disparities between America’s news consumers. The study’s results cast the light of perspective on the marketing hype of Fox News, who brag incessantly about being the highest rated cable news network.
The ratings boast has always been a specious act of puffery by Fox News considering that their numbers are achieved by herding all of the wingnut demographic into a single corral, while the remaining TV viewing universe is dispersed to the rest of the available channels. What’s more, Fox’s ratings represent a tiny portion (about 1%) of the nation’s population on their best showing.
What we learn from the Pew study is that Fox’s appeal among young viewers sets a low water mark for the network. Millennial respondents in the study say that they trust Fox News less than any other news source. A plurality of 43% distrust Fox News. That’s significantly more than the next lowest source, Rush Limbaugh, who is also distrusted by far more millennials (32%) than trust him (4%). The 43% of Millennials who distrust Fox is nearly three times the number who distrust MSNBC (15%).
Looking at the numbers from the other direction, the percentage who trust Fox (35%) is less than CNN (60%), MSNBC (37%), and 4 to 12 points less than the three broadcast news networks. Even sources like the Daily Show and Al Jazeera, whose sample sizes are smaller, are still rated with more viewers that trust them than distrust them, compared to Fox’s net distrust results.
The numbers aren’t much better in other demographic groupings. Gen-Xers trust Fox News less than every other source except for Limbaugh. And the same thing is true for the Baby Boomers who are Fox’s best demo. With a median age of 68.8 years, Fox’s audience is over six years older than either CNN or MSNBC. It’s even worse for their top rated program (Bill O’Reilly) who’s average viewer is over 72 years old.
In addition to the poor showing by Fox News, the rest of the study’s bottom dwellers are primarily right-wing radio talkers, Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck.
From a business perspective, Fox News has to be deeply concerned about the next generation of viewers. If their opinions remain constant they are not going to be tuning in to Fox. However, putting this in a political context is more complex. While Millennials clearly have an aversion to Fox’s conservative programming, they are also less likely to participate in the electoral process. On the other hand, about half of the older Baby Boomers are fond of Fox, and they are more reliable voters. So Republicans may have some short-term advantage from that, but looking forward to the next generation of seniors is going to be a problem for Fox and the Republican Party.
Of Course , all of that may change if Millennials become more active politically due to factors like the first African-American president, or the first woman, or Latino, or candidates who support marriage equality and marijuana legalization. And Fox has been busy alienating all of the fastest growing voter blocs while simultaneously insulting their base of seniors with derogatory swipes at Hillary Clinton’s age. Even before this Pew study, polls have shown Fox News as both the most and least trusted news network.
The technological platforms for news are also drawing more young people. So participation by those connected to Facebook and Twitter will likely increase. In short, the future is a mystery. What isn’t mysterious is that Fox News is rapidly becoming a universally hated network. Its biases and brazenly dishonest reporting are being rejected in ever greater numbers. It is a fading entity whose prospects are dwindling with time. And that’s good news for democracy and America and the world.
The past couple of weeks has seen an ever-expanding exposition of brazenly dishonest reporting from Fox News star Bill O’Reilly. There are now at least five documented examples of his embellishing his own exploits in war zones and other “dangerous” assignments. His accounts have been refuted by both hard evidence and the testimony of his colleagues.
So how does O’Reilly respond to these charges that would severely damage his credibility if he had any? Well, after issuing some unsupported but emphatic denials, and threatening journalists covering the story, O’Reilly is now widening the battlefield and lashing out at his favorite target, the “liberal” media (video below).
On last night’s Factor O’Reilly presented a segment on “The Collapse of Liberal Media.” Of course, O’Reilly has done this before and has even declared the liberal media dead. So the fact that it is well enough to be collapsing is kind of an improvement in its condition.
O’Reilly began his rant by exalting himself (surprise) and his success in the ratings as compared to MSNBC. It’s true that Fox News has been the dominant player in cable ratings, but that is not a particularly groundbreaking revelation because it has been true for several years. So why is O’Reilly suddenly making a headline out of this worn out self-promotion? Could it have anything to do with his fury over being exposed as a pathological liar and his compulsion to seek revenge against his accusers?
The guest for the segment was O’Reilly pal and disgraced former CBS reporter, Bernie Goldberg. The first point Goldberg made was that in five of the last six presidential elections the more liberal candidate won the popular vote. Therefore, he surmised, that should have been helpful to liberal media. How he came to that conclusion is a mystery as there is no correlation between ratings and the political party of the White House. In fact, MSNBC’s best ratings were achieved during the Bush administration.
Goldberg went on to offer his list of the three reasons that MSNBC was is such dire straits. And they actually weren’t bad. Particularly the first reason which he said was the most important:
“Liberal news media violate the cardinal rule of all media. They’re not entertaining.”
That’s true. Fox News has redefined television journalism by fundamentally transforming it from an information medium to an entertainment medium. They dress up their pseudo-news segments in the same melodramatic packaging that entertainment outlets use: conflict, scandal, mystery, and hyper-charged emotions including hero worship and fear. Fox employs flashy graphics and attention-grabbing audio whooshes and gongs to decorate their reports that are presented as “ALERTS” regardless of the news value. And always there is sex. Fox’s roster of hosts has more former beauty pageant contestants than journalists. And they aren’t shy about putting their “talent” in revealing clothes and camera angles. In fact, Fox CEO Roger Ailes demands it. As for news, Fox’s concentration on tabloid thrill-fiction like Benghazi and Obama’s birth certificate is the news equivalent of porn.
This presents a dilemma to serious news enterprises that seek to carry out a mission to inform the public, but also need the public to watch. Fox News has gone out farthest on this limb and virtually abandoned the practice of ethical journalism. MSNBC and other networks need to find the proper balance.
Goldberg’s second reason was also surprisingly rational. He said that…
“People tune in to opinion journalism not so much to get information, but to get their own opinions validated by people on the air.”
Indeed. However, that isn’t something that explains MSNBC’s ratings or distinguishes them from Fox. There is no network that is more guilty of pandering to a partisan ideology than Fox News. So Goldgerg’s second reason only manages to accurately describe why Fox is so successful in corralling a loyal, uncritical audience.
On the other hand, his insight into MSNBC is way off base. He asserts that MSNBC fails because their politics are so far-left that they don’t validate the liberals in their target audience. Apparently Goldberg has never watched MSNBC. The notion that it is radically leftist could only be held by someone who is either unfamiliar with the network or utterly confused about liberal politics. Plus, he ignores the three hour morning block anchored by Joe Scarborough, a conservative Republican and former congressman.
The third reason Goldberg gave for MSNBC’s poor ratings is that “there are plenty of other places to get left-of-center information.” He’s right. And that is a key factor in Fox’s success. They have cornered the market for right-wing TV news. That means that viewers who want conservative slanted reporting will congregate at Fox, while all other viewers are dispersed across the dial, thus diluting the standings of any single network. So it isn’t that there are more conservatives watching TV, it’s just that they all watch one channel. Additionally, Goldberg conceded that Fox was designed from the start to be the right’s mouthpiece saying that…
“If you want to get conservative information on television, you do what Roger Ailes did. He found the niche, as he put it. Fifty percent of America.”
O’Reilly didn’t bother to object to Goldberg’s characterization of his boss or his network. Fox hardly ever tries to defend their fairness or balance any more. They now proudly regard their biases as a marketing feature to the wingnut demographic. But when the discussion turned to alternative sources for news, both O’Reilly and Goldberg slipped off the rails. They asserted that there were few places to find conservative views online. It makes you wonder which Internet they are using if they aren’t familiar with the Drudge Report, Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze, Breitbart News, the Daily Caller, National Review, WorldNetDaily, Townhall, Newsmax, and of course, their own fib factory Fox Nation.
On the flip side O’Reilly gave his impression of the left’s Internet presence in a rant that was loaded with his unique brand of animus and hostility. He was veritably frothing as he said that…
“There are some conservative websites, but the left-wing dominates the Internet. There are all these sleazy, slimy, far-left throwing it out. And that’s hurt the television industry.”
So O’Reilly and Goldberg don’t see any significant right-wing Internet sites, but the many left-wing sites they see are all slimy. How they are hurting television isn’t explained. In all likelihood, O’Reilly is covertly referencing his own problems with Internet sites like Mother Jones that have exposed his rank dishonesty. By telling the truth about him, O’Reilly believes that his Internet critics are destroying television. And, according to O’Reilly & Company, all of this is happening in an environment wherein it is the so-called liberal media that is collapsing. But how is a collapsing liberal media destroying the all-powerful conservative media?
O’Reilly really needs to make up his mind. Are liberals a dangerous cabal that are having a profound and negative effect on O’Reilly’s TV kingdom, or are they a band of weaklings who are struggling to keep from dissolving into the ether? Or is it a waste of time trying to figure out the hypocrisies that infect O’Reilly’s mind since the only thing that’s ever on it is what benefits him?
