Featured Cable News Viewers Are Getting Smarter – Dumping Fox News

In the first quarter of 2013 the trends for cable news viewership are affirming past performance. And once again, Fox News is losing viewers at a faster rate than its competitors.

While remaining on top overall, Fox lost nearly 20% of its total audience as compared to the same period last year. Even worse, in the critical advertising demographic of 18-54 year olds, Fox scared off a full third of their viewers. Only MSNBC managed to stay relatively flat, holding onto most of their audience.

On specific programs, Fox’s top rated show, The O’Reilly Factor, dropped by 26%. His primetime colleagues, Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren, similarly flopped by 28% and 35% respectively. That contrasts sharply with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show that increased 5%, the only program in its time period to rise.

CONTINUE . . .

Wowsers! Billy O must really be doing something wrong to lose out to Rachel Maddow. He opened his mouth again I'll bet. :tonofbricks:

 

Younger viewers continue to tune out Fox News as the network’s ratings for the month of August hit their lowest level since 2001.

Fox News remains the overall ratings leader by a wide margin, but young viewers are tuning out the conservative network in record numbers.

Compared to August 2012, Fox News was down -10% in total viewers and -24% in the A25-54 demographic in total day. In primetime, the network was down -15% and -24%, respectively. The network was down in both total viewers and the A25-54 demographic in every hour of programming from 9am-11pmET, except for “The Five,” which was flat in total viewers and down -25% in the demo.
…
“The O’Reilly Factor,” “Hannity” and “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren” were down for the month compared to August 2012: Bill O’Reilly’s program was down -9% in total viewers and -25% in the demo, while Sean Hannity’s show was down -21% in total viewers and -26% in the demo. “On the Record” was down -20% in both ratings measurements.

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Fox News is trapped between pleasing the old audience that keeps them number one, and fighting a demographic battle that they are destined to lose.

Beneath the high ratings there are some serious problems brewing at Fox News. Roger Ailes may win the battles against CNN and MSNBC, but he can’t beat Father Time.

CONTINUE . . .

Looks like Fox news and the republican party has the same problem. Young people are getting tired of grouchy old men in 2,000 dollar suits that only want to bring us more government, more wars, more debt and less freedom.


Continuing a downward spiral that began last September during the Democratic National Convention, Fox News primetime ratings, in the key 25-54 year old demographic, have declined to numbers they haven’t seen since August of 2001. These are numbers that revert Fox back to the George Bush, pre-9/11 era when Fox was struggling for attention.

CONTINUE . . .


Just how old is its audience? It is impossible to be precise because Nielsen stops giving an exact figure for median age once it passes 65. But for six of the last eight years, Fox News has had a median age of 65-plus and the number of viewers in the 25-54 year old group has been falling consistently, down five years in a row in prime time, from an average of 557,000 viewers five years ago to 379,000 this year. That has occurred even though Fox’s overall audience in prime time is up this year, to 2.02 million from 1.89 million three years ago.

The network also has been faced with a recent string of nightly wins in that 25-54 audience by CNN, which had been hopelessly behind in recent years.

“The numbers indicate they haven’t been replacing the younger viewers,” Mr. Moffett said of Fox News. Many of the loyal viewers the network has always had are simply aging up beyond the 54-year cutoff for many ad buyers. The result is an audience edging consistently above that 65-plus number.

CONTINUE . . .

The Ratings Collapse of The Establishment Media Represents A Huge Cultural Change In The West

There is a massive media shift taking place in America and other Western countries as more and more young people reject mainstream media institutions. They are turning to blogs, Internet news anchors, social media websites like Twitter and Facebook, and internet-based commentators to get their news and alternative perspectives of reality.

Big media companies have no chance competing against the rising independent media in a free-market atmosphere. They are history unless they can successfully lobby the federal government to censor anti-government websites in the name of cyber security. (Note to TND, lobbying the government to censor the competition is not "free enterprise" it's corporatism.)

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This huge shift in news consumption will have cultural, social and political ramifications for many years to come, possibly altering the very nature of our societies and our governments. What we are witnessing is no small revolution - it is the liberation of the Western media and, by extension, the Western public mind, from government and corporate narratives about history and reality.

CONTINUE . . .

And you said I was paranoid of technology TND. :laugh:

I love it when it's putting the old dinosaur corporate media out to pasture where it belongs.

 

How can it stay at this "huge level of success" (with numbers lower now than in 2001) with all the young people abandoning it? Kudos to you old timers for keeping it going this long.

But how much longer can you old folks do it without bringing in new blood?

 

Here's some more news . . . Dianne Feinstein and TND will both like this. :smilewinkgrin:

New wave of online censorship as establishment panics about losing ability to dictate reality.

Desperate to cling onto their ability to dictate reality, the crumbling mainstream media is beginning to kill off article comment sections in a cynical bid to silence dissenting voices.

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Recent polls show that trust in mainstream media is hovering at record lows. After largely failing to influence the court of public opinion via paid trolls, the establishment is starting to panic and is responding by moving to cull comment sections altogether.

Popular Science and BoingBoing.net recently announced their decision to kill comment sections on their website. The New York Times also recently indicated that it is scaling back comments and removing them from some articles altogether.

As an excellent Daily Tech piece highlights, Popular Science admitted that its decision to pull the comment section was in order to preach a “scientific doctrine” on global warming without being challenged.

CONTINUE . . .

From Popular Science . . .

Another, similarly designed study found that just firmly worded (but not uncivil) disagreements between commenters impacted readers' perception of science.

If you carry out those results to their logical end--commenters shape public opinion; public opinion shapes public policy; public policy shapes how and whether and what research gets funded--you start to see why we feel compelled to hit the "off" switch.

CONTINUE . . .

Yeah we can't have the public's opinion swaying public opinion that's a job better left to the corporate funded experts, talking heads and international elitists.

So shut up and go away public!
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Yeah 2.2 million viewers out of a population of 350 million? Yeah that's great.

Compare that to Alex Jones Infowars that gets 15 million visits a day. And Fox keeps sending more young people (under 54) over! :thumbsup:

Seymour Hersh on Obama, NSA and the 'pathetic' American media.

Pulitzer Prize winner explains how to fix journalism, saying press should 'fire 90% of editors and promote ones you can't control'

Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.

It doesn't take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist".

He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.


http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2013/sep/27/seymour-hersh-obama-nsa-american-media


That's a novel idea. A journalist that isn't a paid shill for one side or the other.

Fox certainly can't claim to have any journalists like that. But then neither can any of the other four conglomerated corporate networks.

No wonder the corporate media is becoming a thing of the past

 

Nope just once a day is all it takes to be better informed than Fox viewers.

Alex's staff isn't full of corporate shills that get paid to spin the news so it's favorable to the neocon "over the hill gang" aka t hetiny percentage of the population it depends on to keep it alive. :smilewinkgrin:

 

Hey wait a minute TND you said in another thread you were opposed to using bloggers as a source because they weren't "real journalists" I believe those were your exact words. And here you are sourcing bloggers trying to make your point!

That's too funny! :laugh:

What's the problem couldn't find any "Fox Facts" to make your point? :laugh:

That reminds me of them democrats that want to force Obamacare on the rest of us while they make themselves exempt. Too funny! LOL! I like you TND you crack me up. :thumbs: