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…
evanmjones +
Economics:
When a country doesn’t manufacture much of anything anymore it generally loses it wealth, period. When your population gets close to the capacity of the land to support it you lose those exports.
When your getting your behind kicked in world trade you DO NOT go to your enemies with favored nation trade agreements.
Nor do you keep fining and taxing your companies over environmental issues when they are working to clean up.
Bullets and bombs wasted on idiotic religious killing crusades are worse than throwing money away to buy foreign oil. Plus 4,400 US soldiers lost their lives in Iraq alone, with 35,000 wounded. Another possible 1 million coalition, contractor and civilian lives were lost. Over a string of absolute LIES.
Some of you need to take a look at somebody the chronic loser Bush failed to… because Iraq was his focus from day one.
Foreclosure Phil Gramm, former republican senator and lobbyist
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/am_credit_mother_jones_nyt.php?page=all
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act
The Republicans you defend are among the arsonists who burned down our national home, and yes, economically-financially Clinton was also responsible. But the Republicans combine the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to stoke the fire that consumes America.
Personally, I never vote for, nor defend either side because they manufacture need for global governance.
History:
Had real change been implemented way back world status gaps would look much different. Imagine that predatory capitalism had been replaced with something like worker cooperatives… CEO type leadership commanding salaries 400 times that of the average worker wouldn’t be needed, nor would cooperatives likely need nor elect to utilize lobbyists. The robber barons’ days need to be ended and replaced with something good… they are why this world remains so volatile.
[SNIP! Oh, forget it! If you want to fight the Iraq War over again, for heaven’s sake do it elsewhere. ~ Evan]
davidmhoffer TJ was correct, and was not “talking through his hat” as you so disparagingly claimed.
===================
“I will promise you this:
That if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president it is the first thing I will do.
I will get our troops home.
We WILL bring an end to this war.
You can take that to the bank”
-Obama, Oct 27, 2007
====================
But don’t take my word for it:
[SNIP! Oh, forget it! If you want to fight the Iraq War over again, for heaven’s sake do it elsewhere. ~ Evan]
Sorry for that Evan. I thought it fair to compare the lies promoted by “experts” on AGW to those promoted by “experts” on WMD, but I understand the topic is media preferences on a climate blog, not perceptions management by networks, and I will therefore desist.
Sartec asked if Murdoch was “too factual: for me in response to a referenced statement demonstrating that this was not the case.
My preference is for no television.
cheers.
[REPLY – Okay. And I concede this is a somewhat more political thread than normal. The point is well taken that experts can and often do go badly astray (sometimes the error is reasonable, sometimes not). ~ Evan]
Quoting: Henry chance (10:57:07) :
“Resident Obama…”
Commenting:
Good one, Henry!
I shall ignore the Iraq nonsense, but address the rest.
Imagine that predatory capitalism had been replaced with something like worker cooperatives…
I tried that, but I shuddered too much.
CEO type leadership commanding salaries 400 times that of the average worker wouldn’t be needed, nor would cooperatives likely need nor elect to utilize lobbyists. The robber barons’ days need to be ended and replaced with something good… they are why this world remains so volatile.
Enforced by whom?
And if companies without CEO-type leadership can out-compete the others, fine. They are free to go and do that. You seem to believe that wealth is just sort of lying around waiting to be picked up and that those nasty CEOs are grabbing an unfair share. But wealth is created. And much of the actual value results from effective organization and direction rather than merely from production itself. That sort of talent is rare, extraordinarily valuable, and does not perform tricks on command. That’s what Lenin utterly failed to grasp.
Or to put it another way, it usually doesn’t matter how good the weapons are if the general is lousy. At any given point, some CEOs (the Orren Boyles of the world) are undeserving. But whatever they are paying Hank Reardon, it’s not enough.
Furthermore, do you imagine that tycoons just pile up their money and sleep on it for a bed? They hire and consume. And what is left is invested in others that hire and consume.
When a country doesn’t manufacture much of anything anymore it generally loses it wealth, period.
So much for the US, Western Europe, and the Information Age in general. I think you need to reexamine this premise.
And no, I am not particularly worried that our jobs no longer mostly consist of mindlessly banging things together.