Why does the Fox Noise Network have such high ratings?

[mwb970]

I just read a news item that mentioned that Fox Noise is "the overwhelming ratings leader" among cable news networks, a claim I have heard before. But Fox is 110% aligned with the president, whose plummeting popularity hit a new low of 28% in a recent poll and continues downwards. 70+% of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Fox Noise helped the Bush administration put us on that wrong road, and is helping him keep us there. So why do they have higher ratings than, say, MSNBC, whose political views appear to be aligned with a huge majority of the public?

Do the dwindling Bush dead-enders all watch Fox all day every day? Or are there normal people (i.e. Bush critics) who watch Fox for some reason? Is it because they are on in all the hotels and airports?

I really don't see how a channel whose political views are diametrically opposed to a large majority of Americans nonetheless has more viewers than any other cable news source. What gives?

[WI_DEM]

1. it's high because all the fundies/nutwingers allign themselves with

that network, while everybody else is divided between CNN, MSNBC, the networks, ect. But I've also heard that some of their shows such as "O'Really" have seen their ratings fall and that other cable news networks like MSNBC are gaining.

[Redbear]

2. Rational people have many TV choices

Crazy people only have one.

[Sydnie]

3. so many businesses keep their public tv's tuned to Faux

An example is Dunkin Donuts. They have tv's to entertain you while you wait for your order. They are always tuned to Faux. I went in for some same day surgery in December and the tv in the public waiting room was tuned to Faux. I am sure that there are mnay more examples of businesses and public service areas (such as hospitals) who keep their set tuned to Faux, thus boosting the ratings.

I have asked that the channel be changed before. Sometimes they do that, other times they tell me that they don't have a control device to change it or they would have already, so it is a "corporate" decision that they have no control over.

I firmly believe that is why the have the ratings that they do.

[cynatnite]

4. My bank has several branches and they all have it on Faux...

Makes me wonder if these businesses get a little cash on the side for doing it.

[Sydnie]

9. My bank solved that problem

They bought the I Love Lucy show on DVD, plugged that into their tv and that's what they show while you wait for an officer to help you. Certainly a more entertaining, less stressful wait that way.

[bigbrother05]

5. ONLY AN OBSERVATION

We lived in europe, for five years an received AFN American television, which was crap, the news was terrible, they would share the programming, but Faux was on in Prime time, also other times during the day. The number of televisions on the post were always on Faux news, and I,m sure it is the same in the middle east.

[donco6]

6. Have you ever flipped through channels trying to find . . .

. . . a channel showing actual NEWS outside the 5 or 6 o'clock hour? CNN has Nancy Graceless on 24/7; MSNBC has equally abysmal programs on most of the time. The only place you can find a channel showing news happens to be Fox. And if you don't know Fox's predilections, you'll probably camp right there.

That's my observations, anyway.

[EmmitFitzhume]

10. I would agree

with that. MSNBC airs a ton of documentaries/taped programming, particularly on the weekends when it is almost impossible to see a live update. As for CNN, IMO the quality has and continues to plunge downhill.

[donco6]

12. Plunge is right.

Years ago, I used to tune CNN in my office while I was working on the computer and it would run for hours, just cycling through stories and updating other ones. Now I almost NEVER tune to CNN. I get so tempted to turn to Fox, but my stomach won't allow it.

[Ladyhawk]

7. They tell my family what they want to hear. :( n/t

[dysfunctional press]

8. well, it seems like A LOT of du'ers watch it...

i don't. ever.

but there seems to be no shortage of threads reporting what's been said on the faux news channel.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

15. "Know Thine Enemy."

Or, to use a really lame sports analogy, don't teams study their opponents' strategy/strengths/weaknesses/etc. in order to beat them? Perhaps DUers are tuning in for the same reasons. The next time I'm seated at the Thanksgiving dinner table and a relative (by marriage) blurts out some Sean Hannity statistic about the amount aborted "babies" would have contributed to Social Security, I'll be better prepared (rather than jaw-dropping and "pass the potatoes"). Granted, it's impossible to keep up with the wingnuttery at FUX, but I think it's a mistake to ignore them. These phuckers vote.

[dysfunctional press]

19. what's to know?

they twist everything to support the repug agenda...how long does one have to watch to figure that much out?

but by all means- keep on helping their ratings if it makes you feel good.

[havocmom]

11. Because there is a segment of the population that cannot work a clicker (n/t)

[WorseBeforeBetter]

13. Think of the many sources that "normal people" are getting....

their news from. Many of us gave up on cable "news" a long time ago, so it seems that we're not being factored in any polls. The hardcore wingnuts, however, live and breath Faux (the ones who say things like we "we found WMDs!"; "abortionists"; and "the US is so beautiful there is no reason to ever leave it!"). Could you post the link for the news item you read? 70+% of Americans may think we're headed in the wrong direction, but for different reasons (one person's gay marriage is another person's illegal war is another person's stem cell research). Faux viewers are loyal because their very limited views are validated over and over. The rest of us don't need the validation, or get it from many different sources. It does sort of boil down to Thinkers v. Believers, and Faux viewers are certainly the latter.

I thought Faux's ratings had dropped substantially (I don't recall over what time period). It's kewl now for the "mainstream" to call Faux on its bullshit, even though Stewart, Colbert, and Olbermann have been doing so for quite a while.

I imagine that a Hillary or Obama nomination will bring about quite a spike in ratings. We'll see if folks have wised up a bit more by then (ha!).

[mwb970]

16. Found it!

The item that inspired my post was from the NY Times. The relevant quote is:

The back-and-forth also comes amid a backdrop of increasingly nasty competition between the two networks, with CNN trying to promote the quality of its journalism as a counter to Fox’s ratings. Fox continues to command by far the largest news audience in cable television.

The article is at...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/24/us/politics/24obama.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[DuaneBidoux]

14. I tend to believe that regular joe wingnuts don't do much in life generally.

My father is a perfect example: every single view he gets about the world comes from Fox and that is all he does all the time. In my memory (and I'm 48) my father has never picked up a book, gone on long vacations without tv, participated as a volunteer or in some other social club capacity, etc.

I think progressives generally use their time in a much broader array of uses. We read, we travel, we belong to social and other kinds of clubs. I would dare say that progressives spend a great deal more time on the Internet than Fox viewers. We gather our information over a much wider variety of sources and that dillutes our viewing "strength."

[GeorgeGist]

17. The Ratings Mirage

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2005

"How can CNN have more total viewers when Fox has such a commanding lead in average viewers? Conventional industry wisdom is that CNN viewers tune in briefly to catch up on news and headlines, while Fox viewers watch longer for the opinion and personality-driven programming. Because the smaller total number of Fox viewers are watching more hours, they show up in the ratings as a higher average number of viewers.

CNN regularly claims a cume about 20 percent higher than Fox 's (Deseret Morning News , 1/12/04). For instance, in April 2003, during the height of the fighting in Iraq, CNN 's cume was significantly higher than Fox 's: 105 million viewers tuned into CNN compared to 86 million for Fox (Cablefax , 4/30/03). But in the same period, the ratings reported by most media outlets had Fox in the lead, with an average of 3.5 million viewers to CNN 's 2.2 million. "

[specimenfred1984]

18. TV is on its way out; Bill Gates says in 5 years

http://articles.news.aol.com/business/_a/gates-says-web-will-revolutionize-tv/20070127110009990004?ncid=NWS00010000000001

--- "I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had," he told business leaders and politicians at the World Economic Forum.

The rise of high-speed Internet and the popularity of video sites like Google Inc.'s YouTube has already led to a worldwide decline in the number hours spent by young people in front of a TV set.

In the years ahead, more and more viewers will hanker after the flexibility offered by online video and abandon conventional broadcast television, with its fixed program slots and advertisements that interrupt shows, Gates said. ---

[booley]

20. This may be a bit dated now but...

"...Reporting on the ratings rivalry between the Fox News Channel (FNC) and CNN is often misleading--and almost always over-hyped.

"Fox Tops CNN as Choice for Cable News," declared one typical headline (Chicago Tribune , 3/24/03). "Fox News Channel Continues to Crush CNN ," reported Knight Ridder (Dallas Morning News , 2/3/04) in a column comparing the rivalry to a party primary: "Fox News Channel is winning the Nielsen caucuses." Last summer (8/17/03), the New York Times Magazine declared, looking back at the period of the Iraq invasion, "Fox was--and still is--trouncing CNN in the ratings."

After exposure to countless similar stories published since January 2002, when Fox was reported to have surpassed CNN in the Nielsen ratings, one might naturally conclude that Fox has more viewers than CNN .

But it's not true. On any given day, more people typically tune to CNN than to Fox .

So what are the media reports talking about? With few exceptions, stories about the media business report a single number for ratings (often expressed two different ways--as "points" or "share"). This number is often presented as if it were the result of a popularity contest or a democratic vote. But it is actually the average number of viewers watching a station or a show in a typical minute, based on Nielsen Media Research's monitoring of thousands of households.

The average is arrived at by counting viewers every minute. Heavy viewers--those who tune in to a station and linger there--have a greater impact, as they can be counted multiple times as they watch throughout the day.

When an outlet reports that CNN is trailing Fox , they are almost invariably using this average tally, which Fox has been winning for the past two years. For the year 2003, Nielsen's average daily ratings show Fox beating CNN 1.02 million viewers to 665,000.

But there is another important number collected by Nielsen (though only made available to the firm's clients) that tells another story. This is the "cume," the cumulative total number of viewers who watch a channel for at least six minutes during a given day. Unlike the average ratings number the media usually report, this number gives the same weight to the light viewer, who tunes in for a brief time, as it does to the heavy viewer. ........."

Full story here.. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2005

If numerouse businesses are keepign thier tvs tuned ot Faux as per a corporate order, that could easily skew the ratings to thier favor no matter if everybody else watches Faux or not.

[Yavin4]

21. We're Really Talking About A Relatively Small Number of People

Fox gets about 700,000-800,000 viewers. The broadcast news nets blow away Faux, and CNN blows them away when there's major news like Katrina.

Faux wins because they skew heavily to right and provide right wing talking points. Conservatives love to be spoon-fed their information. Liberals tend to go to a variety of news sources, blogs, books, magazines, lectures, newspapers, The Daily Show, plays, music, movies, the arts, etc. Liberals don't concentrate on one radio show like Rush's or one news network.