While Americans continue to put global warming aka climate change at the bottom of the list of worries, it seems the electronic media outlets that most often push alarming climate stories are losing favor. This interesting juxtaposition was from my Shoptalk TVSpy business newsletter today:
CNN Fails to Stop Fall in Ratings – from The New York Times
CNN continued what has become a precipitous decline in ratings for its prime-time programs in the first quarter of 2010, with its main hosts losing almost half their viewers in a year.
The trend in news ratings for the first three months of this year is all up for one network, the Fox News Channel, which enjoyed its best quarter ever in ratings, and down for both MSNBC and CNN.
CNN had a slightly worse quarter in the fourth quarter of 2009, but the last three months have included compelling news events, like the earthquake in Haiti and the battle over health care, and CNN, which emphasizes its hard news coverage, was apparently unable to benefit. More…
Fox News Has Best Quarter In Network History – from Mediaite
Fox News had their best year of all time in 2009. Now that we’ve finished the first quarter of 2010, it’s clear FNC is showing no signs of letting up –they just finished their best quarter ever, in total day total viewers.
It was also the second highest rated quarter ever in prime time total viewers.
While Fox News continues to see record ratings, their cable news competitors are dropping off even more year-to-year. In the A25-54 demographic during prime time, FNC was up 16%, while CNN dropped 42%, MSNBC was down 22% and HLN was down 40%. More…
right below your article:
Ads by Google
Official Al Gore Site
Help Harness American Ingenuity and Create New Jobs. Learn More Now!
RepowerAmerica.org
LAWLZ
Joe romm’s book ranks a robust
Sales Rank: #749,920 in Books
Sarah Palin sold over a million books before they released the first one.
There are many topics CNN ignores. They twist some topics and people push back.
I have been following this scoreboard for quite a while. Some weeks Fox has more viewers than all the others combined. Fox is growing, they others are shedding viewers (and influence).
They are preaching to a smaller and smaller choir.
Sea change? It must be that pesky Atlantic conveyor belt after all. ;->
Paul
Here is a weekday example that shows what I mentioned above:
25-54
Total day: FNC: 419 | CNN: 153 | MSNBC: 138 | HLN: 153
Prime: FNC: 597 | CNN: 204 | MSNBC: 206 | HLN: 146
Total Viewers: (L +SD)
Total day: FNC: 1465 | CNN: 479 | MSNBC: 468 | HLN: 346
Prime: FNC: 2200 | CNN: 593 | MSNBC: 852 | HLN: 491
Fox is outdrawing CNN, MSNBC, and Headline News combined.
Resident Obama said to not watch Fox. That was a boost also. I think people have built in baloney detectors and catch on when a media style has an agenda.
Smithsonian, Nature, National Geographic NPR all add a tone of preaching and sad alarmism to simple stories.
I am realist. I sure miss the arctiic snipe. Snipe wings with buffalo xtra hot dipping sauce. Those were the days. March madness will nevah be the same.
I don’t see a direct cause and effect here, except to say those sources that are falling out of favor lean left on virtually every issue. Nothing specific to global warming involved.
A person’s concern for the environment is strongly correlated to their sense of economic well-being. (Let’s leave out college students and others who do not work for a living.) When people feel prosperous, they have more money to spending on non-essentials. When times are tough, they become more concerned about the short-term.
Conclusion: Wealth and prosperity are the answer to our problems and not the cause of them!
Environmentalism is clearly now a tool of oppression. The targets: Capitalism, America, Industrialization, humanity. Fox is not shy about offending others.
Our country is in the most terrible state of peril. It is encouraging that Americans are looking to our heritage for answers. For revealing this, and the clear, emphatic comparisons between the principles of freedom and statist tyranny, there is non like Glenn Beck. The intensity of Fox programming has put many off. It is important to look past this to the message. Once understanding the message, the reason for the passion is clear. God Bless Glenn Beck.
“…you decide.” Obviously people like to make decisions themselves rather than be fed what the media controllers wish to broadcast.
To my mind, this is a reaction to shameless way that the typical media, including CNN, are uncritical shills for various causes, including the global warming.
Either CNN and MSNBC are going down, or they are heavily subsidized by advertising that wants the global warming message pounded.
If it’s the latter, the money that is being spent is going down with the ratings.
CNN is painful to watch. There silly, fact-less stories are nothing but smears.
4 Networks with 8 business/news channels all carry the same center-left slant.
1 Network with 2 business/news channels carries a right of center slant.
The lone network pulls in more than 50% market share for several years, trending upward, yet none of the four others are willing to adjust.
They won’t even Colbert themselves and pretend to come from a different direction.
I’ve heard NPR hasn’t covered a single news story about Climategate. They obfuscate and denigrate the same as CNN and MSNBC, so it isn’t surprising nobody listens to them anymore. People don’t trust a partial (as in only part or none of the story) news source so they tune out. Simple as that.
FOX would be in serious trouble if the other networks ever wised up and shifted their focus to reporting news, and away from activism and elitism.
Next we will figure out that according ot our own government’s EIA, the USA has the largest fossil fuel reserves of any country.
And it’s quite easy to convert coal to liquid fuels. Just google up “Fischer-Tropsch” or ask the Crow Indians, who are using their reservation to get out of EPA regs and build a huge coal to diesel plant right now. Wanna know a secret, the NAZIs used this technology in WWII to supply their war machine.
An interesting media experiment would be for CNN to do a documentary in several episodes on prime time on the Rise and Fall of AGW (and its morphing GW-AGW-CAGW-CC- Cooling hiatus in CAGW) with arctic ice stuff, glaciers, pachauri, Nobel Prizes handed out, etc. and see what happens to their ratings.
I think this column and video by conservative republican Cal Thomas and liberal democrat Bob Beckel offers good insight regarding Fox and the other networks:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2010/03/column-crazy-like-a-fox.html
If “CNN” meant “Climategate News Network” maybe they’d pick up some viewers… but then they’d have to change their agenda…
In order to evaluate why CNN has declining financials one of the factors I would require is observation of actual CNN news. Since I have no intention to watch CNN, I won’t be doing an evaluation.
Why don’t I watch CNN? A long time ago I decided they did not bring objectivity to the news.
John
My better half caught her parents watching FoxNews last week. Six months ago, CNN was all they watched & Fox was just a bunch of “liars.”
Only a matter of time before they’ll admit they agree with me about global warming.
Don’t think this set of facts has much to do with the climate change nonsense. Simply put, if 40% of American adults self-identify as conservatives and only 20% as liberals, and the liberal media has many outlets but the conservative only one, what would you expect? This is a “dog bites man” story… of interest, but unsurprising.
Seems to me CNN is having similar problems as canada’s CBC. Although in the case of us folks here in canada, we still have to pay for that useless content weather we watch or agree with it or not. I love how people mock and attack fox news in a time that they are actually doing so well. I think I smell fear.
CBC still has yet to publish any official coverage of climate gate or ask climate skeptics for comment. Aside from Rex Murphy’s commentary that you carried a little while ago, they remain silent on that front.
Meanwhile David Suzuki continues to shed a tear every time some snow melts away. His influence alone probably forbids any objective climate coverage.
Fox does well in capturing the anger of populist notions, as per this short essay by Oson Scott Card —
http://ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2010-03-21-1.html
It doesn’t indicate that Fox is wise or important. I’d be careful with the claim that their stand on climate change has anything to do with it; it seems that most of the Fox ratings surge is the feeding of those who are prone to tea party sympathies.
The obvious problem here is that being anti-AGW can backfire. There’s already a great deal equating the “it’s all a hoax” crowd with the same group who protests evolution. (Where do you think they learned to not debate from? Evolutionary biologists being assailed by uneducated imbeciles politically elected to school boards, that’s where.)
Quote from the NYT story on CNN.
“CNN executives have steadfastly said that they will not change their approach to prime-time programs, which are led by hosts not aligned with any partisan point of view. ”
Oh Really!!
Good bye to CNN the dinosaur of cable news. That’s what happens when you can’t or won’t adapt to changing times.