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…
As many have pointed out the key to the MSM ratings decline is an unwillingness to change. Even a blind man can see the programmatic propaganda machine grinding against fewer and fewer viewers. But to change course and allow the floodgates of balance to open, means the “system” admits complicity. They are now stuck with Hobson’s Choice. To admit they have suppressed skeptics is an admission of guilt. Admitting guilt torments pride – which is alarmists greatest liability. They wish to be seen as infallible, but the world knows better.
What we find sad is how this stubborn pride has damaged the well-intentioned sustainable energy and conservation movements. Energy independence makes sense for most people on Earth. AGW grabbed this ball and wrapped it in marxist agitprop hoping to slip the whole package past an unsuspecting public.
That they deliberately manipulated data contravening the scientific method, only damaged their case further. Once exposed, the church of global warming engaged in coverup – deny, defend and delay tactics. Like any great scandal, it is the coverup that sinks the guilty. Hiding your errors guarantees eventual exposure, and punishment.
The idea of building a world (virtual or material) based on scientific fabrication, in order to impose a political agenda – then forcing people to live in it – is pure egomania. And self-destructive.
Refusal to admit one’s mistakes, and then PAY for those mistakes – has brought the downfall of mainstream media. The same scenario animates the Roman Church today. It will be the unjust coverup of officials’ pedophilia that sinks the Church. Pride is not restricted to alarmists… or human beings.
“Bob Koss (14:23:30) :
NASA sure has fallen a long way over the past few years. Times are so tough they are opening an auto repair shop.”
The article says they will be investigating the “mysterious acceleration”. Hey, they’re still looking for advanced propulsion concepts!
The British Establishment is really good at whitewashes.
No one ever wants to rock the boat, i.e. disturb the status quo.
So expect mild ‘wrist slaps’ and plenty of mealy mouthed promises and commitments that “it will never happen again”.
Heaven forbid anyone gets fired or even severely disciplined Fraud is a ‘white collar’ crime and in the UK nobody deemed ‘sound’ by the Establishment ever gets punished for such a minor misdemeanor.
So the ghist of it is when CNN loses 3 viewers and MSNBC loses 1 viewer they are down 42% and 22 % respectively?
What turns some of us off from CNN, MSNBC, etc. is that they don’t ADMIT their liberal leanings. FoxNews knows it’s conservative in its commentary and doesn’t hide it. If CNN would come right out and just say that when they do commentary they were liberal and proud of it, then I believe their ratings would at least stabilize. As it is, they try to live the lie of “impartiality” when everyone that sees just a few minutes of their broadcasts knows better.
But why do they still show CNN at airports (or do I fly to the wrong ones)?
[snip]
Murdoch, Branson and many of these over-rich, over influential characters blow with the prevailing political wind. The Sun (A Murdoch paper) has switched sides a number of times, and is presently swinging to the right, as Labour might lose power. Watch Branson do the same.
The Internet and sites such as WUWT are rapidly changing the face of news, and the MSM can not keep up. Part of the reason TV is so vile in the UK is that the channels chase the ‘yoof’ audience, forgetting that the majority of the population is both older and more conservative in their views. As people educate themselves elsewhere, ie via the Internet, they know when the MSM is misleading them, and stations such as Fox are the beneficiaries. The power of the Internet is extraordinary, that is why countries such as China fear it and censor it so much. Imagine what would happen if 1.3 billion people finally discovered the truth?
Finally, my thanks to all who contribute here. I am constantly amazed by the level of knowledge that is displayed, and I am grateful for the free education!
I lost my innocence about journalistic standards many years ago when the Sun slanted just about every single story in the paper along the lines ‘Neil Kinnock is to blame’ and/or ‘the sainted Margaret Thatcher blah, blah, blah….” I gave up on all tabloids when another paper decided to ignore reporting the actual cricket matches and instead devoted pages and pages to Ian Botham’s love life.
I have reached such tipping points a number of times. A few years ago I got fed up that the Independent decided to run the same story every single day: Iraq War, Lies, No WMD, blah, blah, blah… I don’t think there is a single newspaper whose reporting is not strictly controlled by a particular party line and it pervades the whole paper. Simple reporting of facts has long since died a death, if ever it was really there.
I followed a lot of the US elections via US sites on my satellite TV. I am generally unappologeticly liberal and have long been used to derisive put downs of Fox on all sorts of web sites. But I was appalled by the one eyed reporting everywhere except, astonishingly on Fox. They have biases all right but at least they reported the facts and it was the only balanced view of the Clinton/Obama struggle.
Now we have Climategate and the whole thing is laid even more bare. If news is unwelcome it is not news in many papers and on many networks. It isn’t just a question of slant, it simply does not exist if it conflicts with the party line. We see this on the BBC in the UK as well.
Today people don’t simply turn on the TV and watch everything until it is time for bed. There is a lot of choice and once somebody has passed a tipping point they are likely to stay away forever. I expect a lot of people today never even look at a TV news broadcast. I rarely watch a BBC news bulletin today unless I have a particular reason to tune in. Years ago I would pretty well automatically catch the 9 O’clock news.
Fox actually had a drop in the later years of the Bush Presidency and CNN ratings jumped. Obama is doing for Fox what Bush did for CNN, folks know they can not trust CNN when it comes to a Democratic President/Congress anymore than they can trust Fox when it comes to reporting on a Republican President/Congress .
Both CNN and Fox are echo chambers, anyone relying on either for their news may be consider themselves the victim of a psyop operation, otherwise known as brainwashed. So people who do not know any better or have any alternatives hop back and forth depending on who is in charge. As Mark Twain said, those who do not read newspapers are uninformed, those who do are misinformed, same with cable news.
The definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Democrats and Republicans both have their own rehtoric, and special interests, but in the end, both rank doing what’s best for the country and it’s citizens low on the totem pole, and so nothing improves, and it’s always the other parties fault, and things will get better when the other party takes over, and it doesn’t. Wash, rinse, repeat.
But I guess when people having a collective IQ of 100 are allowed to vote for President and the Senators, something our founding fathers would have been horrified to even consider, this is what you get. This is no longer a representative government of the people, by the people and for the people, its government of the multinational corporations (MNC), by the MNC and for the MNC. In Iran the supreme leader chooses who can run for President, in the US it is the MNC’s. A phony democracy, with phony news that pretends otherwise.
Politics has become like a religion or football game. Folks choose their party and ideology and cheer for their team. At least it’s entertaining (the fans of this sport most of all).
pft
maybe in your world.
But, the times they are a changing.
The internet has set us free from the shoddy media. It’s easy to read news from over the world, and to actually read scientific papers that dispute prevailing scams which are numerous in the U.S., including AGW. Thanks, WUWT and other truth-seeking websites free of political/financial taint. How fortunate we are, as our ancestors were extremely limited in finding facts.
For example, during the IPCC meeting, the newspaper in Brazil had a completely different version of the final meeting from what appeared in the U.S. press. According to that paper, the U.S. president was NOT invited, and actually ‘crashed’ the meeting which was held by Brazil, India, China and So Africa to protect the developing world from the U.S. and Europe’s efforts to stymie their growth.
I don’t watch TV news(except for the local weather forecast); the only time I turned on CNN was during the Katrina storm, which the commentators blamed on the then-president and failed to mention that the people in its path had 2 days of warnings about the dangers, yet did not evacuate. Since I live in a coastal state, I had watched the storm approaching New Orleans, and it was expected to hit on the western edge, which would have totally overrun the city with tides. Then at the last minute the storm passed to the east. I assumed everyone had fled because it is common knowledge that N.O. is below sea level and dependent on pumps to keep it dry. NOT ONE COMMENTATOR ASKED THE LOCALS WHY THEY STAYED. My common-sense nature has prevented me ever watching such nonsensical ‘news’. I guess it hasn’t improved, judging by their ratings.
“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.”
Perhaps the problem is that they (and the NY Times) truly believe that their hosts aren’t partisan.
You can’t find anything more indicative of the lefty-echo chamber that is the MSM than this.
How are things a changing, Steve? By going running back to the other party that works for billionaires and hoping for that trickle down? How well has that ever worked?
Since that famous trip to open up trade with China that Nixon made, while Kissinger was teaching the Saudis how to get more money for their oil, we’ve been set up to fall hard and we just Walton’d right into it like mongoloids.
I hope it changes, but I’m not going to waste a moment watching Glenn Beck and believing it will.
Our CBC is CNN lite, but will not survive with out their govt funding. The constantly biased corp, is staggeringly silent on the collapse of the climate consensus fraud.Up here its save a billion a year, close CBC.Their basic premise appears to be, that we citizens are too stupid to be told the truth. Of course many canadians think CBC staff are too stupid, to know truth, honesty or integrety in any form. Fox is like fresh air in a stuffy room, compared to the manufactured drivel CBC presents.
@Ed Murphy (19:32:01)
There is another technical term for “trickle-down economics”.
That technical term is “Economics”.
(a/k/a Remedial Economics .001)
There is also a technical term for folks who persist in the belief that when the rich get poorer the poor get richer. (And that technical term is “ignoramus”.)
What we are seeing now is the narrowing of the gap between rich and poor. There is a technical/historical term for that, too: “Bad Times”.
Increase your IQ by 23.7%.
Just kill your TV.
When did the gap between rich and poor widen? Well, the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Age, and the Information Age.
When did the gap between rich and poor narrow? Well, the sack of Rome, the Dark Ages, the Black Death, the Mongol Hordes, the 100-Years’ (& 30-years’) War, the Crisis of 1837, the Panic of 1891 (etc.), World War I, the post WWI recession, and the Great Depression.
During which of the above periods did the poor make out worse? Having been desperately poor myself (very recently and for a long time), I think I can answer that. Do you honestly think that you are better off if all your friends go bust? Think again.
FOX alone seems to be the network that has gotten its head around that. (It’s not a matter of liberal vs. conservative, it’s a matter of idiotic vs. patently obvious/repeatedly demonstrated.)
Viewless: Apparently the addiction to the media non-reality is overwhelming — even some high IQ posters can’t break the habit. Folks, get out of the box they have created for you. Think like —hmmmmm — scientists.
Lose the TV — find reality. Use other sites (like this) on various subjects. You will be amazed at the distortion you have been fed.
MSNBC was down 22% what does that make their ratings, one? I don’t mean one rating point I mean one person.
JRR Canada (19:35:17) :
Our CBC is CNN lite>>
Now that’s not fair. CNN doesn’t put on hour long documentaries where they speak to their audience like they were nine year olds.
I think CNN’s problem is that they have become politicaly correct to the point where they can’t report the news at all. Their quest for “even handed” reporting means theyhave to get both sides of every issue, even if one side is a bunch of qucking ducks. Fox just calls them quacking ducks.
quacking not qucking. Str8 typo on my part. Unless it was subliminal…
It’ll be interesting to see how this is (not) covered by the MSM…
1) a new IARC-JAXA sea-ice extent max for 2010, 14,405,781 on the 30th, beating out 14,375,000 on the 8th. This is the latest annual max on record (only June 2002 to present in the IARC JAXA data).
2) even the NSIDC graph at http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png is edging up to normal.
Most likely, we’ll see some spin about how it’s all a thin mono-molecular layer of rotten ice.
Keep in mind that GE owns MSNBC and NBC and it appears that the CEO of GE is patently supporting every thing Obama wants to do in order to get a payback from Obama.
GE is heavy into “green” energy and they want to get special help from a President who knows how the manage patronage and bribes better than anyone. They will never be objective on Global warming, Healthcare, Cap and Trtrade, Card check, immigration reform, etc. For GE it is good business, whil it is bad for the country when a large corporation joins forces with the President.
The NBC News dept has become the outlet for propaganda just as the Russians used it’s news outlet
Maybe CNN is losing viewers because they share a progressive-liberal bias with several other media giants and because all these stations get their news from two main wire sources that are also progressive-liberal sites. When you consider that the number of people who openly designated themselves as progressive-liberals is about 30%, their audience is split between all the sources with only Fox News as an independent balanced alternative. As the political climate surrounding the Obama administration and the progressive-liberal majority in a democratic supermajority became revealed, people began to realize that the mainstream media and cable news sources were not defending their freedom but these stations were advocating governmental control of their lives. If you are a political moderate or a conservative, why would you watch them?