{"id":890,"date":"2008-04-30T15:38:01","date_gmt":"2008-04-30T22:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=890"},"modified":"2008-04-30T15:38:01","modified_gmt":"2008-04-30T22:38:01","slug":"fox-news-in-critical-condition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=890","title":{"rendered":"Fox News In Critical Condition"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the first quarter of 2008, Fox News was the slowest growing<\/a> cable news network (10%), behind MSNBC (66%) and CNN (87%). For the first time in six years they finished in 2nd place. Now, in the first month of the 2nd quarter, the diagnosis is even worse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Ratings<\/p>\n

Notably, Fox is showing a 14% decline form their year-ago numbers, while their arch nemesis, MSNBC, posts a 9% increase. This comes in the midst of a contentious election year when demand for news is uncommonly strong. Why then is Fox waning? The same dynamics I wrote about a month ago are still in play today:<\/p>\n

“The stagnation of Fox’s audience can be traced in part to the downward spiral of the Bush presidency. Fox has long tethered its fortunes to a conservative ideology that has fallen out of favor.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mainstream audiences are less interested in the partisan cheerleading of right-wing zealots. They may also be tiring of the Crossfire-style tongue lashing engaged in by the modern punditocracy. A case in point is Keith Olbermann’s Countdown, which has been criticized for avoiding confrontation by declining to book adversarial guests. But its strategy is validated by consistently being the fastest growing program on cable news. The numbers for April show that it is the only<\/em> program to grow (+21%), compared to CNN’s Campbell Brown (-23%) and Fox’s Bill O’Reilly (-12%).<\/p>\n

MSNBC also benefited from the contributions of the rest of its lineup (Race For the White House, Hardball, Verdict) which were all either stable or higher, while their competition was uniformly lower. Even Countdown’s repeat contributed by improving on last year’s Doc Block by 10%.<\/p>\n

What is particularly disturbing is that, in this environment where Fox News is gasping for air, the Democratic candidates for president chose this week to succumb to the howl of publicity hounding. What we already know about the narrow-minded nature of Fox’s audience, combined with the evidence that it is shrinking precipitously, should be enough to convince rational Democrats to remove Fox News from their itinerary.<\/p>\n

This is not the time to surrender. The Democratic embargo of Fox News has almost certainly played a part in the network’s decline. Their programming has suffered by being over-weighted with right-wingers and Republicans. They have resorted to whining on air about the kids who won’t play with them. If it wasn’t hurting them they wouldn’t mention it. Now, with Fox on the ropes, Democrats should stay strong and resist whatever urge it is that compels them to act against their own interests by accepting invitations to a party from a host that seeks only to diminish them.<\/p>\n

Let’s hope that now that the thrust and parry of the Obama\/Clinton appearances on Fox are history, they can manage to rein in their impulses and get back on the team. Fox is hostile territory and our generals should not be giving them aid and comfort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the first quarter of 2008, Fox News was the slowest growing cable news network (10%), behind MSNBC (66%) and CNN (87%). For the first time in six years they finished in 2nd place. Now, in the first month of the 2nd quarter, the diagnosis is even worse. Notably, Fox is showing a 14% decline […]<\/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":[26,42,24,33,23,22,30],"class_list":["post-890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-ratings","tag-bill-oreilly","tag-cnn","tag-countdown","tag-fox-news","tag-keith-olbermann","tag-msnbc","tag-rupert-murdoch"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-em","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":962,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=962","url_meta":{"origin":890,"position":0},"title":"Cable News Viewers: The Next Generation","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/2\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Ratings for the second quarter of 2008 are in and it has ceased to be news that Fox is the slowest growing cable news network: 2nd Quarter 2008 vs 2007 - 25-54 Network% Gain\/Loss MSNBC+46 CNN+22 Fox-2 Far more interesting are the trends that point to long term viewing patterns.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8900,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=8900","url_meta":{"origin":890,"position":1},"title":"Fox News Is The Biggest Ratings Loser On Inauguration Day","author":"Mark NC","date":"1\/22\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Monday's presidential inauguration was a television event that was heavily promoted by all of the networks covering it. But one network was conspicuously short of viewers during President Obama's speech and throughout the broadcast day. While overall viewing was down for all three cable news networks compared to 2009's inauguration,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":453,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=453","url_meta":{"origin":890,"position":2},"title":"MSNBC Growing Faster Than Fox, CNN","author":"Mark NC","date":"5\/31\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"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. Primetime M-F CNN FOX HLN MSNBC Persons 2+ -13% -2% +14% +51% Persons 25-54 +8% +14 +22 +40% Total Day CNN FOX HLN MSNBC\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":565,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=565","url_meta":{"origin":890,"position":3},"title":"Fox Buries Iraq War News","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/21\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The Project for Excellence in Journalism just published the results of their study of news coverage for the second quarter of 2007. Continuing the trend from the first quarter, Fox News had far less coverage than its cable competitors. Proving that it simply doesn't consider the war in Iraq a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","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":890,"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 "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":41055,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=41055","url_meta":{"origin":890,"position":5},"title":"Rachel Maddow is the #1 Cable News Program for First Quarter of 2019 Despite Trump’s Fox News Hype","author":"Mark NC","date":"4\/1\/2019","format":false,"excerpt":"The Rachel Maddow Show has achieved yet another milestone in her program's ratings surge. She has been outperforming her competition since the midterm election last November. That includes staggering routs of Fox News and its primary Trump-fluffer, Sean Hannity. In a press release from MSNBC, Maddow is shown to have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"Rachel Maddow","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/maddow-cheers.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/maddow-cheers.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/maddow-cheers.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890","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=890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}