{"id":782,"date":"2008-02-04T06:11:58","date_gmt":"2008-02-04T14:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=782"},"modified":"2008-02-04T11:47:59","modified_gmt":"2008-02-04T19:47:59","slug":"sub-primetime-meltdown-hits-fox-news-where-it-hurts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=782","title":{"rendered":"Sub-Prime(Time) Meltdown Hits Fox News Where It Hurts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past year there has been a broad array of economic and political indicators that have been trending generally downward. In the U.S. jobs having been declining, as have exports. Construction has pulled back and property values have fallen. Wages are not keeping pace with inflation. At the same time, approval ratings for President Bush have cratered and Republican Party registration is down. GOP primary voters are showing up at the polls in significantly lower numbers than Democratic voters.<\/p>\n<p>Not surprisingly, this social climate crisis is also being reflected in the market performance of the Fox News Channel. For 2007, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.variety.com\/article\/VR1117980025.html?categoryid=1019&#038;cs=1&#038;nid=2562\" target=\"_blank\">Fox News squeezed out<\/a> a meager ratings increase of 4%. While that was enough to beat the somnambulent CNN&#8217;s 2% gain, it was far short of the surging 32% rise enjoyed by MSNBC.<\/p>\n<table align=\"center\">\n<tr>\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/Pix\/Charts\/fox-07.jpg\" alt=\"Fox 2007\" border=\"1\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"10\" \/><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>The new year didn&#8217;t produce much to brighten Fox&#8217;s spirits. Despite the abundance of news, Fox still managed to lag far behind its competitors. Here is a sampling of some of the important events that took place in January:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Primary contests in six states<\/li>\n<li>Nine nationally televised debates (two of which were on Fox News)<\/li>\n<li>Benazir Bhutto&#8217;s assassination in the last days of 2007<\/li>\n<li>Deadly violence increased in Iraq<\/li>\n<li>Bush delivered his last ever State of the Union Address<\/li>\n<li>The stock market suffered historic declines (the worst January for the Dow in 7 years, 17 for the S&#038;P 500, and the worst ever for the Nasdaq)<\/li>\n<li>Britany was committed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This sort of activity usually triggers increased viewing for news networks. Indeed, that was the case for CNN which rose 42% for the month, and MSNBC which nabbed a 37% gain. However, Fox pulled up the rear with a paltry 9% uptick. At a time when viewers are tuning in to news with greater frequency, Fox is being left behind while its competitors are reaping rich rewards.<\/p>\n<p>For those seeking an explanation for the disparity between Fox and the rest of the news purveyors, you need look no further than the content and style for which Fox has become famous. The influence of rightists in the government and the media is dissipating. As it does so, the noise level on Fox News is swelling to an earsplitting shriek. They are descending (and condescending) into a desperation fueled by their own crumbling credibility. They are finding it increasingly difficult to lure fair-minded commentators and public figures to appear on their tainted air. The refusal of Democrats to participate in Fox-sponsored debates is having a real impact on both the network&#8217;s performance and their perception as the Republican house organ. That effort must continue and broaden to include ANY appearance by Democrats or progressives (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=555\" target=\"_blank\">Starve The Beast<\/a>) The result of this cold shoulder is an over-reliance by Fox on plainly biased personalities like their newest contributors, Tony Snow, Rick Santorum, and Karl Rove. I expect we will also be seeing a lot more of Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, and Bill Kristol, as the Foxians resort to just interviewing one another.<\/p>\n<p>The current stable of Fox News hosts are becoming noticeably more shrill. Chris Wallace <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=702\" target=\"_blank\">recently branded Democrats<\/a> as <em>&#8220;damned fools&#8221;<\/em> for their refusal to be abused by Fox demagogues. Bill O&#8217;Reilly went <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=744\" target=\"_blank\">positively crackers<\/a> as he shoved an aide to Senator Obama because the aide was blocking his view. John Gibson didn&#8217;t see anything wrong with making offensive and homophobic jokes about Heath Ledger on the same day the actor died.<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"320\" height=\"240\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"5\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/akaD9v460yI&#038;rel=1\"><\/param><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"><\/param><\/object>Fox News is in a sort of journalistic death spiral of its own. The more people tune them out, the higher they turn up the volume on their idiocy amplifier (and they&#8217;re already way past eleven). Then even more people tune out. This process will continue until no one is left but the brain-damaged spawn of a Coulter\/Limbaugh clone experiment gone horribly awry.<\/p>\n<p>Fox has already destroyed any pretense of credibility that they might have hoped to use to delude the weak members of the herd, and now they are simply becoming a parody of themselves. They still have a surplus of habitual viewers that may take a while to wind down. But the time is coming when their ratings will be struggling to keep up with the Bass Fishing Channel. And their programming will be just as exciting and newsworthy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past year there has been a broad array of economic and political indicators that have been trending generally downward. In the U.S. jobs having been declining, as have exports. Construction has pulled back and property values have fallen. Wages are not keeping pace with inflation. At the same time, approval ratings for President [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,6],"tags":[42,33,22],"class_list":["post-782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-ratings","tag-cnn","tag-fox-news","tag-msnbc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-cC","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9020,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=9020","url_meta":{"origin":782,"position":0},"title":"Fox News Hits Record Low In Viewer Trust (Just Like Their Ratings)","author":"Mark NC","date":"2\/6\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Public Policy Polling just released their 4th annual poll on the measure of trust Americans have in TV news. Like previous polls, Fox News topped both the \"most trusted\" and \"least trusted\" categories. However, the striking thing about this year's poll is that Fox dipped to a record low in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11257,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=11257","url_meta":{"origin":782,"position":1},"title":"Christie&#8217;s Bridge-Gate Scandal Boosts Rachel Maddow To Ratings Victory Over Fox News","author":"Mark NC","date":"1\/13\/2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The dominance of Fox News in the Nielsen ratings for cable networks has not been seriously challenged for most of the past several years. There have been periods that looked promising for the competition, particularly the months between the Democratic National Convention and the presidential election in 2012. During that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/maddow-3x1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":36694,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=36694","url_meta":{"origin":782,"position":2},"title":"MSNBC Has Biggest Black Prime Time Audience on Cable, Fox News Isn&#8217;t Even in the Top 10","author":"Mark NC","date":"1\/9\/2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Last year was a banner year for MSNBC as it ratings surged to unprecedented new highs. Much of this was driven by the soaring popularity of Rachel Maddow, but the rest of the network's roster enjoyed similar success. Many of the programs achieved their highest ever ratings in 2017, a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"Fox News MSNBC","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnews-racist-smears.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnews-racist-smears.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnews-racist-smears.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1286,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1286","url_meta":{"origin":782,"position":3},"title":"Cable News Trek: The Next Generation","author":"Mark NC","date":"6\/3\/2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Fox News has been reveling in their post-election ratings bump. By all appearances it is really just a pity party for the losers who are congregating at the Fox water cooler to assuage their misery. But I have to give them credit for having such unparalleled devotion to their demon\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":855,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=855","url_meta":{"origin":782,"position":4},"title":"Fox News No Longer Number One","author":"Mark NC","date":"4\/2\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Continuing a long pattern of decline, Fox News once again underperforms its competitors. The first quarter of a presidential election year can generally be expected to boost viewership for news networks. For CNN and MSNBC this has been markedly apparent. For Fox News...not so much. As a result of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8405,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=8405","url_meta":{"origin":782,"position":5},"title":"MSNBC: #1 Cable News Network In Primetime For Two Days Post-Election","author":"Mark NC","date":"11\/9\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The reelection of President Barack Obama was certainly a gratifying victory for Democrats and supporters of a moderate path forward for America. However, it also seems to have been a victory for the left-of-center cable news network, MSNBC. Fox News has been dominating the cable news ratings for about a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}