Comments on: Fox beats CNN in prime-time news, but so what?

By: Bob

Bob — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:16:36 +0000

Dan Carlin did a good podcast on this topic that got into the fact that all cable news is skewed. One of his points is that FOX has a monopoly on the Right, while the Left is splintered by CNN and MSNBC. Also folks like MSNBC have followed Fox’s lead by being adversarily ideological becuase it gets ratings. Would the landscape be better if Fox had some competition for conservative viewership?

Heres a link to the cast: http://www.dancarlin.com/csredir.php?show=Show-162—FOX-Hunting

By: Cricket

Cricket — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:36:38 +0000

Coke beats Pepsi I hear, but they are both poisonous!!!!

By: fikshun

fikshun — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:50:00 +0000

@Tom: Agreed. As soon as you bring FoxNews into the discussion, you immediately have to query the Daily Show. Satire is satire. One can’t pick and choose. And sadly, the Daily Show represents the best and most insightful news analysis on television.

By: Russ Wellen

Russ Wellen — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:43:50 +0000

As far as its channel placement, in the suburbs of New York, where I live, CNN is still located between MSNBC and Fox.

Somewhat center-right, it doesn’t offer the fireworks of Fox or MSNBC. Plus, with the likes of Wolf Blitzer, it’s stupefyingly mediocre.

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:16:07 +0000

@chris g One of the most alarming things to me is that the far Right in the US actually come in all sizes, shapes and at every educational level. It’s quite well documented. That’s why discourse has skewed so far right. What passes as left is barely middle of the road, as some of the comments on this site make clear.

By: Darrell

Darrell — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:07:47 +0000

Chris:

I apologize in advance, I’m painting a broad brush, and I don’t have numbers. I’m just going off of experience.

“has anyone done income analysis on these two competing groups?”

I brought up the two news organizations websites in a vague way answer this. It really strikes me to see the difference in the amount of people who watch Fox News and CNN, verses the amount of people who visit CNN.com, and Foxnews.com. Actually my numbers above represent page views to the home page. History tells us that higher earning people are highly educated and have more disposable income. Having worked at a major ISP, I can say that when times are tight the first thing that is dropped from the cable bill is internet. Generally people will keep cable and phone. The amount of people that have cable over internet is staggering, I don’t have raw numbers, but in my experience it seemed like 5:1. I currently work for an internet ad network and I can say that premium advertisers will pay the most money for the traffic on isp home pages and news sites. I’m going to assume that higher earning people will visit cnn.com because either A) They have access to internet at home. B) They work in a job that has access to the internet most of the day, and in general these jobs are better paying. Of course there exceptions to this, and I’m painting a broad brush, but it’s something worth looking into deeper.

By: Ubertramp

Ubertramp — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:07:09 +0000

I think more people play World of Warcraft every night than watch CNN and MSNBC combined. :-/

By: Baldrick

Baldrick — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:06:43 +0000

I swore off the cable shouting head shows in 2002 and have been quite content with that decision. I still get updates in the blogosphere on the lunacy still emanating from those shows, further affirming my decision.

Fox gets two million viewers a night, I recently saw, but there are about 120 million voters. So we are clearly talking about extremists on the tails of the distribution. They are loud, of course, and now they show up a political rallies wearing guns and spouting dazzlingly foolish slogans. But what they are not doing is persuading others over to their side. Indeed, the more extreme they get, the more they are driving reasonable folks away.

So Fox News is really the propaganda unit for a form of virulent extremism that it is driving revulsion of those positions rather than opposition to Dems. They are painting the GOP as a loony bin and increasingly isolating “the base” (al-Qaeda in Arabic). The only real concern is that their violent rhetoric will lead to more violent action.

By: bay

bay — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:49:36 +0000

As many watch fox news as voted for nader in the last election..Networks dont yet realize how much damage fox news has done to them. When fox obviously lies , delibertly putting a D instead of a R on a congressman when he has done something wrong, and leaving out and downright lying to twist facts around, they are hurting all networks news because we think if fox does this, do all news do this.. Networks and congress have let integrity and honest reporting lower to the KKK level, spewing hate for half of americans ……………..

By: chris g

chris g — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:21:23 +0000

I have a question….has anyone done income analysis on these two competing groups? My gut tells me that these people who get their news from Fox are not as educated as those who get it from other places….does it not follow that the income level of these under informed viewers would therefore be lower than their more educated counterparts….is this my own prejudice or or is it just logic? If I were an advertiser I would aim my ads at the prosperous groups ….anyone follow this stuff….just wondering.

By: JS OBrien

JS OBrien — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:35:31 +0000

Ah. Thanks Darrell.

By: Darrell

Darrell — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:15:26 +0000

Cnn.com has way more Pageviews (Impressions) then foxnews.com. Something like 28-30mm to 8-10mm a month.

By: Tom Shortell

Tom Shortell — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:12:07 +0000

If we’re going to call Fox and MSNBC’s prime time slots news, shouldn’t we toss The Daily Show/The Colbert Report in there, too?

By: Brad Jacobson

Brad Jacobson — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:10:53 +0000

Denny, I’m not sure what happened in this regard in the rest of the country, but I know that, at least in NYC on Time Warner Cable (which is nearly a monopoly in here), moving CNN from channel 10 to 83 — 83!! — which is surrounded by no channels that people watch, must have done grave damage to its ratings in NYC. I can tell you from my own personal experience and that of my friends here that the location of the channel when you’re just flicking around makes a difference. And it was strange when it happened, too. I don’t remember any announcements or anything, just that one day we turned on channel 10 which has been CNN in NYC for at least two decades (but I think since its inception) and it’s FX or something. Then everyone had to find where the hell CNN moved on their own. Completely bizarre, almost to the point that it’s hard to believe Time Warner Cable didn’t do this to damage CNN’s ratings for some specific reason.

By: Xplodyncow

Xplodyncow — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:31:47 +0000

“But the 62 million who don’t watch the cable prime-time offerings may have simply concluded that it’s just not news, and that the opinionated content simply has too little value.”

Or they may be mindlessly surfing the ‘Net, watching Mentos + Diet Coke explosions, buying stuff they can’t afford, discovering the joys of complementary + alternative medicine, finding kewl noo wayz 2 txt thngs, posting rambling comments on certain blogs …

You have too much faith in your fellow Americans.

By: JS OBrien

JS OBrien — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:16:11 +0000

Darrell: What does that mean?

By: Darrell

Darrell — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:58:56 +0000

For what it’s worth cnn.com completely destroys foxnews.com in impressions.

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:43:07 +0000

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Reddit by srpr: Fox News Channel has three times the viewers of CNN during prime-time news programming. But that viewership is counted in mere hundreds of thousands. So what are the tens of millions of people who are NOT watc…

By: JS OBrien

JS OBrien — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:25:12 +0000

Denny, wasn’t there a time in US journalism when practically every newspaper had a slant?

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:34:39 +0000

I can’t decide which part of this is more upsetting: that people don’t watch news, that news is so bad I understand why people don’t watch news, or that 689,000 viewers aged 25 to 54 watched FOX. Oh wait, yes I can decide. The latter, hands down. Proof that it’s better to keep living outside the U.S. for now. Bummer, I could afford a really nice house in the U.S. now.