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White House War With Fox News Fuels Ratings Fire
The White House’s war on Fox News does not appear to be working.
Preliminary cable news network ratings for the month of October were released Monday, and the thorn in the Obama administration’s side is tracking to have its best year ever. And, in even worse news for the administration, its public assault on the News Corp.-owned network actually gave Fox a bump.
In the two weeks prior to October 11 -- when White House communications director Anita Dunn appeared on CNN declaring the administration’s renewed war against Fox – Fox News Channel programs averaged 1,206,000 total viewers, and 323,000 in the 25-54 demographic, according to Nielsen Media Research. Between October 12 and October 23, they averaged 1,312,000 and 368,000 among the 25-54 set – increases of 9 percent and 14 percent, respectively.
Overall, Fox News owns the top 13 rated cable news shows in terms of total viewers, according to Nielsen, with the ‘O’Reilly Factor,” Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity programs one, two and three, respectively. CNN’s top-rated show was “Larry King Live,” at number 16. Anderson Cooper, the face of CNN, was 19th.
In the coveted 25-to-54-year-old demo, Fox swept the top 11.
It also appears the tête-à-tête between Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann isn’t silencing Fox, either. MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” ranks 14th overall, behind “Fox & Friends.” Even repeats of O’Reilly’s "Factor" get more viewers then Olbermann – by a wide margin. And October was MSNBC's worst month in terms of ratings.
Meanwhile, like MSNBC, CNN experienced its worst month in 2009, falling to fourth place in prime-time behind Fox News, MSNBC and even HLN, formerly “Headline News,” which is owned by CNN.
Through Thursday, the network averaged 202,000 viewers in the A25-54 demo in October. MSNBC had 250,000, HLN 221,000, according to Media Decoder’s crunching of Nielsen Data.
Fox News averaged 689,000.
Comments
Jay Says
Clearly where you should go to for unbiased facts...
"In May 2004, the New York Times reported that Media Matters has received "more than $2 million in donations from wealthy liberals" and "was developed with help from the newly formed Center for American Progress"." wikipedia.org
"The Center for American Progress is a liberal public policy research and advocacy organization. Its website describes it as "... a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to promoting a strong, just and free America that ensures opportunity for all."
Its President and Chief Executive Officer is John Podesta, who served as chief of staff to then U.S. President Bill Clinton. Located in Washington, D.C., the Center for American Progress has a campus outreach group, Campus Progress, and a sister advocacy organization, the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Citing the significant number of its staff and former staff that have been appointed to positions in the Obama Administration, Time magazine recently declared that there is "no group in Washington with more influence at this moment in history." wikipedia.org
SLRTX Says
You got your numbers from tvbythenumbers. The numbers you posted are not statistically valid.
Media Matters for America has found an error, which I have independently verified.
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200911030004
The "pre" data in the post by tvbythenumbers is a 14-day period which includes 2 weekends.
The "post" data is a 12-day period which includes only 1 weekend.
Because viewership changes during weekends, this is not a true apples-apples comparison.
I took the extra weekend data for 10/24 and 10/25 from tvbythenumbers' own web site and found the results below.
MMFA is correct, tvbythenumbers is not. Neither are you.
I expect you will be correcting your post soon.
------------------------------
Original Data Posted by tvbythenumbers
Days --> 14 12
TV Pre Post
P2 1206 1312 9%
25-54 323 368 14%
Corrected using 10/24 and 10/25 data from tvbythenumbers
Days --> 14 14
TV Pre Post Pct
P2 1206 1240 3%
25-54 323 348 8%
Media Matters' data
Days --> 14 14
MMFA Pre Post
P2 1205 1231 2%
25-54 322 345 7%
Anonymous Says
This is totally beside the point. The Obama Administration never hoped to diminish the number of people watching Fox. That would have been nice for those of us who live in the fact-based world, but it was never the Administration's intention.
The goal, purely and simply, was to save the Administration's time and energy, and to stop sending signals that Fox is a real news organization.
If it smells like propaganda, sounds like propaganda, looks like propaganda, tastes like propaganda, and feels like propaganda, why pretend it's journalism?
And just to save time, If you're not already sure that Fox is not a news-gathering organization, go here:
[http://mediamatters.org/blog/200910200008|leo://plh/http%3A*3*3mediamatters%2Eorg*3blog*3200910200008/luzX?_t=tracking_disc ]
[http://mediamatters.org/press/releases/200910200009|leo://plh/http%3A*3*3mediamatters%2Eorg*3press*3releases*3200910200009/Ywt0?_t=tracking_disc ]
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/20/the-ten-most-egregious-fo_n_327140.html|leo://plh/http%3A*3*3www%2Ehuffingtonpost%2Ecom*32009*310*320*3the-ten-most-egregious-fo_n_327140%2Ehtml/xPmO?_t=tracking_disc ]
and/or
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRx5ethd8JU|leo://plh/http%3A*3*3www%2Eyoutube%2Ecom*3watch%3Fv%3DYRx5ethd8JU/iFVz?_t=tracking_disc ]
If that doesn't convince you, you're immune to facts.
Jean Grillo Says
Enough already. Whatever point this administration wanted to make about Fox being talk radio has been is just so much smelly cheese by now. Gibbs needs to go back to just ignoring Roger & Co. Frankly, I've started watching CNN just because I'm tired of Keith constantly telling me about Rush Limbaugh. I never listened to the guy why would I want to watch Keith doing a lousy impression?? Free speech reigns here, no matter who we voted for. I didn't sign on for the Dems censoring anyone. Tricky Dick did that.
jean grillo