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Ratings for CNN, MSNBC down, Fox News up
The first quarter of 2010 saw CNN lose the largest portion of its viewers and MSNBC also drop in ratings as Fox News started with its best quarter ever, New York Times reports.
In February, CNN had its worst month in recent history, finishing behind Fox News, MSNC, HLN and CNBC.
CNN’s long-running host Larry King, who used to draw the biggest audience on his 9 p.m. show, lost 43 percent of his viewers from 1.34 million in 2009 to 771,000 viewers this quarter. Anderson Cooper, the strongest host on CNN, also dropped 42 percent in viewers.
Meanwhile, Fox News continues to increase in its ratings. Greta Van Susteren’s show was up 25 percent from last year, Bill O’Reilly, who has the biggest audience during primetime with 3.65 million viewers, was up 28 percent and Glenn Beck was up 50 percent.
back to top31 Comments to “Ratings for CNN, MSNBC down, Fox News up”
Hooray for Bill and Glenn! As a baby, I am a huge fan of Fox News. It’s about time this little-known upstart becomes popular.
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This is not really surprising.
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Uh-oh. Me thinks the people have discovered they’ve been had and are rejecting the MSM.
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Oh no tell me it is no so, I am sure the left are not happy with this report.
I can hear it now we need the fairness doctrine for Radio and TV news now. In order to stop those mean nasty people at Foxs and Talk Radio.
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The prostitute media may someday learn that prostitution is not really quite as lucrative as honest work.
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What? No obligatory comments about “faux news”??
That’s almost headline worthy by itself.
I dont watch TV often due to bad reception in our area.
I think most of the MSM is guilty of not picking up a story (e.g., OBama “green jobs Czar” revealed to be communist party member) until the story is just about over.
In the green jobs czar story we werent told about that man until he was released/fired from that job.
And 60 Minutes–the once hard-hitting newsmen who followed the facts wherever they led– were sometime back displaced by Hannah Giles and Miles O’Keefe in terms of investigating bogus claims, scammers, flim-flammers etc
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Judging from the number of ads for Depends, osteoporosis meds and other products geared to the elderly, the See BS network and others must mainly be tailoring the news to a skewed demographic. One that has no grasp or access to the conservative blogosphere.
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I watch very little mainstream network or cable news. I used to check MSNBC for conservative guests to make their case, but it isn’t worth my remote control batteries and I guess I’m not alone.
I like FNC’s sunday show, Greta and Cavuto when I have time.
The C-SPAN networks are my primary source of news and political interviews. Without them I wouldn’t even subscribe to cable.
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I can see the next bill the Obama/Pelosi/Reid out of control express train will ram down our throats……they will force all Americans to begin to watch CNN and MSNBC the same as they are forcing all Americans to buy health insurance or else face stiff tax penalties.
I can’t imagine why people won’t watch such fine reporting as is on MSNBC and CNN……oh wait just remembered why…..it is because they are simply one continuous advertisement for the Progressive movement.
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I am building a hen house. When we first moved to our land four years ago, we saw a fox on it. I haven’t seen it for a while. I hope the fox is not in the hen house.
However, to belabor the obvious, now that FOX is at the top of the ratings, we are all SAFE and perhaps will be SAVED.
Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck.
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It is so obvious that the liberal media have abandoned objectivity and have become government shills. Everyone knows they are simply reciting the talking points of the Democratic party and you aren’t getting the real story. Whose got time for an Obama download every night?
There is very little difference between CNN, MSNBC and Jon Stewart or Bill Maher. Every evening is a conservative bash fest. You can’t really call it news. It is mostly entertainment.
Every show that Campbell Brown does gets in some snide remark about Sarah Palin. Wolf Blitzer and his email reader also get into the act. The fawning worship of Obama continues and the constant attack on corporations and wealth is an attack on everyone who works for a living.
Keith Olbermann is an angry white male. He’s a joke and an embarrassment even to liberals. Rachel Maddow is an assault on reason and the senses. Larry King is a door mat. Chris Matthews gets aroused whenever Obama speaks. Who can stand it?
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There is very little difference between CNN, MSNBC and Jon Stewart or Bill Maher
Oh but there is a big difference. The Daily Show is unapologetically biased. While I don’t side with Jon Stewart’s politics all that much, I find his program refreshingly honest. Not to mention funny.
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In a break with habit, I watched a FOX program on the day Obama signed health care reform. Gretta van Susteren, looking like a latex mask, interviewed one of the Republican State Attorney Generals who filed lawsuits to strike the law down as unconstitutional. I’ve never seen a more incurious interview not scratch the surface. I would have been interested to see how the Attorney General was going to respond to the defenses that Congress wrote into the law, but that was not to be. Gretta merely basked in the knowledge that lawsuits were filed.
I don’t mind slanted presentations of news, if I get information or arguments. Rolls of the eyes, gratuitous asides, and betes noirses trouble me not in the least. I have no criticism of FOX with regard to fairness or balance. There’s even value in seeing what sort of talk gratifies your opponents enough to induce them to watch ads for mattresses, diet schemes, hard-on pills, and automobiles.
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Confession is good for the soul. So I have to confess that I record CNN even though I rarely watch the recordings. I say that it is in vain hopes that they will say something intelligent, or that they might have a good guest on. I suspect though it is because of an insane reaction inside of me to Huffington’s accent.
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It is not surprising that FOX’s ratings are going up. What is surprising is that NBC CBS ABC CNN (P)MSNBC have any ratings at all. I have understood that Cartoon Network often beats all of them.
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I do watch fox occaisonally, but avoid the others like the plague. If you need to ask why, or are wondering what you’re missing, here’s a link to a favorite website of mine that’ll explain it.
http://newsbusters.org/
This is what passes for news to these people.
“Media Research Center President Brent Bozell denounced CNN for relying on bigoted anti-Catholic singer Sinead O’Connor as a credible source to discuss recent allegations brought against the Catholic Church in the cable network’s repeated interviews with her.”
“Imagine if somebody were to really sit down with Osama bin Ladin and say, ‘Listen man, what is it that you’re so angry at me about that you’re willing to have people strap bombs to themselves, or get inside of airplanes and fly them into buildings?’”
So said actor Matthew Modine in an interview published at CNN.com Monday.”
“On Monday’s O’Reilly Factor on Fox News, NPR news analyst Juan Williams furthered the left’s talking point about the tea party’s supposed connection to militias, and even went so far to claim that the Gadsden or “Don’t Tread on Me” flags used by the conservative grassroots movement is “the same imagery that was on Timothy McVeigh”
“Joy Behar’ Guest Host Gives Perfect Example of Bias Against Catholic Church”
“After Bashing Palin for ‘Dem Hit List,’ MSNBC’s Shuster Highlights Liberal PAC ‘Targeting’ Tea Party Candidates”
News? Not exactly.
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When I see the ‘reporters’ for CNN I am reminded of fat, bloated Druids worshiping what they think is the “Mighty Oak” when really they are romping around a scraggly Ulmus americana (a variety of elm whose common name derives from how badly it smells when cut).
My apologies to Druids.
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The decline in ratings for the MMSM (Marxist Main Stream Media) is a good sign. Obviously, all these new viewers that have switched to Fox are coming around to a new and better way of thinking.
They don’t mind the ads for mattresses and other things. An ad for an insecticide to control mindless and obnoxious moths might also have some appeal.
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It’s all about ratings these days.
The network execs used to say to Edward R Murrow and the young Don Hewitt as they began the news “Make us proud”
That has been replaced by “Make us Money!”
In desperate race to the bottom the networks have embraced infotainment in a naive hope that it would pull younger viewers back from the internet and other non MSM news sources.
As for objectivity and fairness.. have we ever had either in our corporate newsrooms? Not that I could see.
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#14 MFW “… I record CNN even though I rarely watch the recordings.”
I can’t watch any cable show unless I have prerecorded it with my DVR. The amount and content of commercials is unbearable.
Have any of you noticed that the ratio of show to ads on the cable news channels is rising? I would love to find some data on what the ratio was years ago compared to today. I believe we are between 30% and 50% ads to show.
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Did Random Name just tell us that he was a chicken?
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Maybe that’s why liberals hate Fox so much.
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XION-20
I agree about the commercials. The one thing about Scroop Moth’s post @ 13 that I agree with, though vulgar for a Christian site, was her(?) reference to the commercials.
But on another note, why isn’t this touted as evidence that the nation is center right? I mean, it’s obvious to me that people are more interested in politics vis-a-vi the high unemployment, high tax, etc. People want to know what’s going on. And the over the top attacks against the Right coupled with the fawning reporting of Obama and the Democrats is just too much for people that consider themselves a-partisan.
People do not tune in to Fox news over and over again without reason. More and more people are agreeing with their fair and balanced approach.
I find it humorous that Fox is considered the Right’s talking piece. The only people that say this are those that are so used to a steady diet of Leftist propaganda disguised as news that ANY defense of the Right is ghastly to them. It’s like jumping into a cold swimming pool: it shocks you at first, but you get used to it. You even begin to enjoy it.
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The numbers don’t mean much without further data to explain them. I’d suggest two reasonable explanations.
First, if folks feel that their opinions are not represented in government, they will gravitate toward a media source that they believe will give voice to them. For the same reason, CNN did better during the Bush years.
Second, blue-collar workers have been laid off at much higher rates than white-collar workers. Fox’s audience tends to be more blue-collar than white-collar. So, Fox viewers have more time on their hands.
Besides, Obama won because he was able to pull moderates away from the GOP. Moderates watch neither Fox nor CNN, in general.
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RSD-24
A lot of assertions. Do you have references to back up your claims about who watches what and why?
I kinda sense the snub, “un-educated blue collars watch…educated white collars watch”. Do you mean to belittle?
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Even as a baby (who prefers PBS), I can see RSD was not snubbing blue collar workers. The facts are the facts, and it is a fact that Fox’s demographic skews toward the working class. This baby has had too much formula, however, and is being torn away from the computer to be burped.
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More on this here.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/still-surging-fox-news-has-best-quarter-in-network-history/
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But Baby, 26, where are those facts?
Another thing, it seems to me that this recession has claimed many a white collar worker. Are those white collar workers also watching Fox, seeings how they can’t find work either?
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Quick search of Fox News Demographics:
http://nyinterconnect.com/network_fox_news_channel.html
You know, maybe it is not a snub. I’m just sensitive to the claim that smart people are Left, and not so smart people are Right. This is something that the Left’s intelligencia has been propagandizing for as long as I can remember.
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#29 I’ve noticed that too Brother Dan.
Liberals call people dumb to prop themselves up and because they have no other argument.
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I watched JK on CNN tonight and they did a segment on the new tanning tax. They poked fun at it, but never asked the crucial question, “Does anyone making under $250K tan?” If so, then is Obama not a liar?
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