WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2024
The cable news ratings are IN: Go figure!
For unknown reasons, the people at Nielsen Media Research release their monthly viewership numbers before the month in question is over.
In accord with that puzzling procedure, Nielsen has already released its average viewership numbers for the month of November.
Go figure! At any rate, the Fox News Channel has been on a well-buttered roll during the current month. At Mediaite, Alex Griffing's report begins exactly as shown:
Fox News Scores Record Share of Total Cable News Audience...
The 2024 election season brought surging ratings to Fox News as it dominated the competition and scored a record share of the overall cable news audience while marking its 45th straight month at number one.
In November, Fox News accounted for an unprecedented 62% of the total viewership across the industry, according to Nielsen Media Research. Post-election that number soared as Fox News captured 73% of the cable news audience in prime time for the second to last full week of the month. MSNBC scored 16 percent, while CNN had 11 percent of cable news viewers during prime time.
So it has gone as an army of Stepfords continue to churn the malarkey.
Now let's get down to brass tacks! Griffing lists the five top-rated shows at our nation's "cable news" channels, along with their average number of viewers for the (current) month:
Most-watched "cable news" shows, November
The Five: 4.4 million viewers
Jesse Watters Primetime: 3.9 million
The Ingraham Angle: 3.32 million
Gutfeld!: 3.30 million
Special Report with Bret Baier: 3.26 million
That's right! All five most-watched shows come from that same "news channel." For the record, the nation's most-watched cable news program, The Five, increasingly goes by an alternate title:
The Bar Scene from Star Wars, plus Tarlov
By the one name or the other, Fox News has been cleaning up! That said, what are the top-rated shows from MSNBC and CNN? According to Griffing, you can read 'em and weep:
Most-watched shows, MSNBC and CNN
Deadline: White House: 1.4 million viewers
Erin Burnett OutFront: 680,000
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell averaged 1.2 million viewers this month. The show got scorched by Gutfeld!, the dumbest and most squalid show in the history of "cable news."
A certain malaise is afflicting Blue America's cable. The Fox News Channel is indefensible, but is it possible, in some possible way, that Blue cable has earned its way out?
We'll have more on that in the days ahead. For today, we'll pose this question:
At such programs as Deadline: White House, were we Blues well-served by the astonishing focus on trying to lock him up?
How can someone actually watch what appears on Fox and then claim that a malaise is affecting blue cable? Somerby seems overly impressed by quantity of viewers today. We have always known that the more low-brow the show the bigger the audience. Is Somerby really blaming blue cable because Fox viewers laugh at Gutfeld's poopy pants and sexist jokes?
ReplyDeleteIt may just boil down to Fox viewers wanting to have fun watching TV, instead of caring about being informed. Is blue cable competing for that audience -- the bros and the cretins? Fewer people care about what is broadcast on blue cable, but fewer people go to museums than baseball games too.
Somerby says: "is it possible, in some possible way, that Blue cable has earned its way out?"
What does this even mean? Different people like different programming on TV. Does Swan Lake deserve to be ignored by the large mass of humanity, or is there a niche for such efforts?
Is Somerby really saying that we should be more like Fox viewers and laugh at the bizarre things they consider humor, or is he saying that blue cable should drop its current programming and compete for that Fox audience?
Presumably the goal of these cable organizations is to make money. Blue cable does that by appealing to a niche audience, just like Fox does. If Somerby is hinting that blue cable would have more viewers if it were more centrist, what is the evidence for that? Our nation appears to be polarized, with a slim center, but perhaps blue cable would do better if it appealed to the more progressive left? It is hard to tell what Somerby thinks we should do, except he strongly dislikes blue cable's current programming. Because he watches Fox 24/7, it seems likely he finds Fox more to his tastes, like that bigger audience he cites.
But cable viewership is not how we decide our elections. Not even social media does that. People have to vote. I don't know why blue voters didn't support Harris, but I doubt it had anything to do with blue cable programming.
Somerby's final hint about what he finds wrong about blue cable refers to their coverage of Trump's trials. I doubt that caused any blue voters to stay away from the polls. I'm sure it infuriated red voters. But blue cable merely covered an ongoing current event -- the prosecution of Trump for his crimes. They didn't put Trump on trial. They did try to explain what was happening to viewers, but apparently not enough watched to let them understand why Trump was not being selectively prosecuted or persecuted by the DOJ or whatever the claims are on the right. It was right for blue cable NOT to echo the lies and fake info on the right.
Many of us are dismayed that Trump's prosecutions are now being dismissed. Failure to cover his trials would have alienated a lot of blue viewers. Trump should never have been elected, given his convictions for real crimes that he committed. That he was, is the fault of red media, not blue cable.
Somerby's contention that we shouldn't prosecute people for their crimes, if their supporters wouldn't like it, is ridiculous. And his suggestion (implied) that by covering a criminals misdeeds, we somehow make him more popular or electable, is also ridiculous. Red voters knew about Trump's crimes and they didn't care. Blaming the messenger (cable) doesn't change the reality that red voters elected a criminal to our highest office and now we are stuck with him, again. Cable is not to blame for that, but they may be responsible for Somerby's decline in rationality and his current wrongheadedness. Or perhaps Somerby too has dementia.
Anonymouse 1:33pm, it’s more than amusing that you write all this crap in service to saying that it’s more important that you’re here disputing Somerby on this blog than it is that the rest of the media counter and repudiate Fox News
DeleteIt’s freaking anonymouse karma.
You are talking gibberish again.
DeleteAnonymouse 2:01pm, oh, you get it.
DeleteThis seems to show that viewers aren't as interested in politics as in the clown-show on Fox. What is new about that?
ReplyDeleteHow can Somerby write about this topic without ever mentioning the word "hate"? Fox sells hate and people gobble it up -- not all people, just people who like that stuff. The same can be said of Trump's performance compared to Harris.
Who are the people who gobble up hate? This year it was youngish men without much education or job prospects. Tucker Carlson aimed his ball tanning at that demographic. Gutfeld aims his sexist jokes at those guys. The bros keep Fox alive.
One finding from the election was that Harris attracted a larger share of older voters. Retirees used to be a large part of Fox's demographic, because they skew conservative, but not any more. Now old people admired Biden and didn't find him as repulsive as everyone else (including Somerby) and they liked Harris for her loyalty and her adherencre to political values that characterize past decades. Somerby talked all around this for weeks without pinpointing it, maligning Harris for being unlike JFK instead of realizing that she was more like JFK in the eyes of voters than in Somerby's own mind. Notice how Somerby abandoned all talk of JFK once the election was over, despite the anniversary of his assassination this past week -- other Dems were remembering him, but Somerby was done using him.
Elsewhere, Dems are talking about building up our own media network to rival red social media. Podcasts and substack essayists are being listed and encouraged. Crickets from Somerby about any of that. He isn't done blaming blue cable yet, his backdoor entrance to blame all of us blue voters, for being lame, not for staying home.
Somerby is a goon. Even his approximations of political discussion make no sense. I suppose we should have given Trump a medal for his crimes. Or we should thrive on outrage the way the right does, or did Somerby misunderstand the outrage we are all feeling now, as Jack Smith's hard work is being discarded while Trump smirks (or he would, if he were still appearing in public).
Somerby seems to think the media invented Trump's prosecutions. He never acknowledges that there were grand juries, indictments, trials and juries involved, who were not Trump haters but included Trump supporters among them. These fair and impartial judges and juries convicted Trump of various crimes, not the media. The media covered these events as newsworthy because of Trump's political involvement, they reported on them.
ReplyDeleteSomerby may not care that Trump is a convicted criminal and fraud, but the people deserved to know about it.
Somerby's point is they didn't deserve to know about it ad nauseum.
DeleteGiven MSNBC and CNN's significantly lower viewership numbers, it makes sense to ask if their focus on trying to "lock him up" has served liberals well.
ReplyDeleteFox News has landed at number 1 for 22 years. It’s not a recent phenomenon.
DeleteI see. The issue is Fox's number one ratings.
DeleteMSNBC and CNN watchers seemed to have disappeared along with millions of Democrats who voted for Biden. It’s a puzzle.
DeleteHarris showed up on Twitter drunk off her ass.
Delete