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FOX Rising
All of you Olbermann and Maddow fans out there: better enjoy them while their shows last.
Here's Glenn Garvin with the latest Nielsen ratings for cable news.
Here's Glenn Garvin with the latest Nielsen ratings for cable news.
posted by Robert at 8:41 AM
7 Comments:
I don't watch any of these, but the times I've come across them I find Maddow more palatable than Olbermann. I'm surprised her show has lost so much in the ratings.
I'm guessing that among the left, as in the right, it's the hyperbole in the shows that attracts the viewers.
If MSNBC had any brains they'd hire commentators like Christopher Hitchens instead of those hack morons. Olbermann is all about insulting people he disagrees with. Maddow is smug, ignorant and not funny. It's all negative and partisan and ministry-of-truthish and who wants to watch that? Plus there aren't many hot chicks on MSNBC, and the ones they have look like they would scream at you if you made a politically incorrect joke.
Fox isn't very good but it's brilliant compared to its competition. Fox realizes that its business is to attract viewers rather than to deliver stern lectures in accordance with the party line. If leftist viewers were the majority Fox would probably cater to them. But this is a center-Right country, and the other networks refuse to give most viewers what they want, so Fox scoops up the business.
I'm probably more bullish about FOX than you are, Jonathan, but you're 100% correct in that they, like any other media entity, are primarily concerned about ratings. Roger Ailes is a very wise man for realizing the huge void in media coverage appealing or at least recognizing the majority center-right in this country. Like any other news channel, they have their good programs and their clunkers, but in the balance I like FOX News.
Either one of you watch meet the press this morning? Maddow was on, together with Brooks (NYT), a guy from the Post and a right of center guy - talking about this very same issue of hyperbolic shows for ratings.
Robert, we are stuck with Fox until other networks accept the fact that they are killing their own businesses by being biased and incompetent, and decide to change. Meanwhile, I remind you that on the day when the House passed the climate change bill Fox was covering Michael Jackson's death to the exclusion of everything else.
LV, the only talking heads I still watch, occasionally, are the Fox guys at 6:40 PM and that's mainly because of Krauthammer. It sounds like MTP is following O'Reilly's formula, where if you can't talk intelligently about something you can at least wring your hands about some scandal or controversy in the hope that viewers who are interested in the controversy will boost your ratings. With a few notable exceptions such as Krauthammer, the old-media talking heads are third-raters who add little of value to anything other than, occasionally, political horse-race discussions. Numerous bloggers, including leftists who I usually disagree with, are far better and you don't have to sit through ads from the rent-seeking govt suckups at GE.
Jonathan, I don't watch these shows, I was merely trying to find out who was playing on Sunday night football.
Sure, Fox milked the Michael Jackson controversy to death, although to be fair, O'Reilly didn't do it as much as others on that network. Then again, I like the O'Reilly Factor so perhaps I'm not unbiased.
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