Giving FOX too Much Credit

[erpowers]

It upsets me that soo many people give FOX News so much credit for being popular. It has been proven that FOX is not very highly rated. Bill O' Reilly's show, which is the flagship show of the network, only gets 2 million viewers. That mean that o'Reilly's audience is half of CBS News' audience, which is the lowest rated nightly news show. All of the other shows on FOX News have even lower ratings. I think Democrats should begin to start ignoring FOX, or at least stop giving them so much credit. I do not think the network really reaches that many people. Let us remember that FOX was the cheerleader for Bush in 2000 and he still lost the popular vote. They do not seem to have that much sway. Neither do other overrated conservative talkers like Rush Limbaugh. I think it is great for Democrats to disprove that lies of conservatives and their networks, but I think we sometimes give them more credit than they diserve.

[RoundRockD]

1. I agree. I read that Nickelodeon gets more viewers than cable news. n/t

[DemNoir]

2. Yes!

The plain fact is nobody is watching cable news shows, look at the ratings. If it where not for DU I think Chris Matthews rating would be 0
instead of .1

Same goes for right wing radio, they are preaching to the hard core knuckleheads that cant be reached anyway.

[Kid_A]

3. You're right, Fox definitely gets more credit than they deserve.

But one thing they do deserve credit for is lowering the standards of public discourse in this country. They got their huge ratings by appealing to people's desire to be told how to feel. Their coverage of anything, whether it's the Iraq War, Laci Peterson, the Election, etc, is much more focused on emotion than facts. Their anchors may be bad at journalism, but they're masters of manipulation. And when the other major cable news networks see Fox winning the ratings war, they're going to mimic Fox's style wherever they can. And Fox will keep getting worse as they try to maintain their lead, and the televised news media as a whole just gets worse and worse.

So you really do need to give Fox some credit, just not the kind they want.

[Enrico]

8. I have to second that

You're right, it has already seemed to affect CNN... I.E. Giving Lou Dobb's a commercial which makes him look like Hannity or something?! What is that!?

[KurtNYC]

4. And remember that cable ratings are different from broadcast

They quote the biggest number they can which is usually something like "total impressions" which means, take for example the Daily Show (because I don't know any of the shows on FNC). If Jon Stewart gets 4 million viewers at 11PM then 1 million on the 2AM replay and 1 million on the 7PM next day replay, they roll those all up and say he delivered 6 million impressions even though some of those will be the same people. And it creates the false impression that he had 6 million watching all at the same time so when you put it against a broadcast number it is apples to oranges.

Cable news skews toward higher income households and we all know that "news" programs merely pandered to what they think their audience wants to hear so they tend to be more GOP-focused in general. When they were blathering on about Clinton 24/7 it only pushed his numbers up.

[Cat Atomic]

5. Does Fox's military audience count in their ratings?

[edbermac]

6. I'm sure The Goebbels Factor was popular in its day too...

:kick:

[Enrico]

7. GOOD TO KNOW!

I was not aware of FOX's low ratings... I was worried that too
many people were watching it and believing that the channel is
somehow related to news. Anyone who watches a show with Bill
O'Reilly hosting and cannot see right through his
ego-power-trip/money hungry agenda is a moron. HELLO, he used
to host a tabloid television show.

[AmerDem]

9. I have never understood why Dem politicians appear on there!

Everyone knows FAUX is no news organization! They are an office of this current administration but still our Democratic reps frequent the channel and give it legitimacy.