This post was inspired by the comments on my post about the passing of Walter Cronkite.
After seeing the decline in the audiences of the broadcast network evening news shows in the attached chart, people had lots of theories.
Was it the retirement of the “old guard” anchors (Cronkite, Huntly/Brinkley, etc.)? Corporatization of the news? Entertainment focus? Cost cutting? Political bias?
I think all those things may have been small factors, but I think the audience share shift from broadcast networks to cable networks since the early 80’s is the major factor.
The dark blue portion of the chart below is the broadcast network affiliate share of the prime-time audience since 1984-85. It looks enough like the broadcast evening news decline to convince me that the shift is the major cause.
For more background on the audience share chart above you can see the original post here.
Well one thing is that with the 24 Hour news station, some might think “why tune into the Evening news when I can watch CNN all day”.
Another reason is the quality of the network/news anchors. No disrespect to Williams, Couric and other, but they don’t come close to the past.
Also media has changed. Now it’s all about ratings, and less about the stories we care about. People just don’t trust the news anchor as much. Are they spinning the news?
These are just a few of the reasons I think. As a journalism student, I looked up to Cronkite, and his passing really hurt. There will never be another.
Maybe it’s just internet? Before internet news were aviable only on TV (and in newspapers). So anyone wanted to see news, to buy the fresh newspaper. Now you don’t have to wait 3-4-5-6 hours to get the news, just go online and surf for it.
Speaking for myself, political bias and outright propaganda distribution is what turned me away from the broadcast news.
With cable stations, the internet and other options I no longer have to try to distill the news out of the nightly propaganda broadcasts.
I strongly suspect that I am not alone.
The internet is also likely a factor, but not until relatively recently, certainly not in the 80’s or early 90’s.
it’s definitely all about cable new stations. i don’t need to tune in at a specific time to one of three channels to find out what’s going on in the world. whenever i feel like it, i can just flip on one of four or six or however many channels that are repeating the same national stories ad nauseum. the only ‘real news’ that will continue to survive are the local broadcasts. i can’t find out what’s going on in my small town or region from fox news or cnn. i need the local affiliate for that, and i tune in for that.
Why can’t CNN International or Al Jazeera English be carried in the United States? Why are the cable companies afraid of carrying international news networks?
CNN International and Al Jazeera are both available in the US,
but I have no numbers on how many systems/subscribers can get them.Edit: Seems like availability of Al Jazeera is new and quite limited.
Edit 2: CNN International is available in the US on Time Warner Cable, Verizon FioS and AT&T Uverse. That indicates to me that its availability is due to the same business concerns that slow any networks breaking into existing channel lineups. Limited availability by the gatekeepers and money.
There’s also the change in family patterns. As a 40-something, I remember our *family* dinner and the (national) evening news were hand-in-hand. We’d eat dinner, listen to the news, and then usually there was a brief discussion (sometimes not so brief). I think that “family” dinners happen a lot less now, work hours are longer, and even when families have dinner together they’re not an hour long like ours used to be. The shorter time together also means less “discussion” opportunities about what the news means … little by little – people are disconnected. It would be interesting to look at unique viewers – I wonder if even adding in the cable news if the numbers still wouldn’t be in decline. Lastly, there’s “The Daily News/Stewart” which shows people want news – but not necessarily packaged into a 6th grade level of presentation.
I still get most of my news consumption from the local paper.(print not online, crazy I know especially since I’m 21)
comments like vipers scare me. There’s this perception that mainstream news media(broadcast news, new york times, newsweek) is somehow biased in a malicious way.(its not) As a result people have stopped trusting these sources and are instead turning to sources like the internet, msnbc, fox news, where all they get is the overexposed punditry reinforcing their established opinions instead of getting actual news. We’re living in a world where the only “news” people get is the news that reinforces their ideology. It’s polarizing and its dangerous. Don’t like Obama, the conservative blogs will never speak highly of him and may not even report on his accomplishments. You’re only getting the “news” that supports an opinion. Its sad and scary.
News is boring.
Unfortunately, romo seems to speak for an ever larger portion of society. Bill, lay a graph over the decline of evening news, with the change in newspaper subscriptions (national) if there is such a number. I wonder how the two graphs would look?
Also I think the decline really took off when local stations went to the “eyewitness news” format of leading with lots of crime stories as well as shifting the evening network news much earlier. It seems to me I remember the network news was on as late as 7:00 PM on the west coast prior to the give back of that early hour, am I correct?
As a person who follows the news (newspapers, magazines, TV…network and cable. and Internet), it seems that people don’t care about the national or world news any more and that includes the people who run the networks. How many “news” organizations on the national and local level are pooling their news-gathering resources? Downsizing is part of the problem. “Time” and “Newsweek” used to be must reads. Now they keep changing their formats and are mere shadows of their former selves. Network whining when the president doesn’t have news conferences (Bush) or does have them (Obama), who can keep up. They used to say that you could turn on news shows and get the same news. Local stations share reporters and anchors. It is literally true now. And if you actually watch the cable news networks they don’t run news either. There is a lot of supposition; innuendo; and outright lying about facts going on there. Breaking news stories are the only objective news they carry. After that they just fill the space with commentary.
I’m reminded of Gore Vidal:
“Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for president. One hopes it is the same half. “
When news division got sucked up into the network entertainment divisions and the almighty greed factor took over. it was downhill from there.
I believe the decrease came with the political left wing bias.
I know I watch HLN throughout the day at random points (because they dont spend 2 hours on each story like CNN, MSNBC, and FOX) but I also watch ABC News at 6:30pm. I like both, and I dont see a reason why to stop watching both. Gibson is a great news anchor for ABC.
As Kay Bradley recalls I also remember watching the Evening News while eating Supper with my Parents. Thanks to today’s Gloom-and-Doom Headlines and Politics, I no longer watch it while eating my meal. Is it any wonder other people have turned it off as well?
Fox News gives both sides of every argument. Dave needs to watch Fox before he makes blanket statements. Network news have lost viewers for many reasons including their political bias which highly infuences their “news”. In addition, you can get instance news from the internet and cable news. Monday NBC news has an investigative report about the closing of the prop company in Hollywood. That’s news???
Dear Nancy
Tourism is Number 1 business in Southern California. The entertainment business is Number 2. If a long time prop house is failing because of lack of business, that’s NEWS in Southern California.
My main source of news is the BBC website. Why?
First. The network stations rarely show any international news. When “ABC World News” considers covering something in California world news while ignoring something in India or Cote D’Ivoire it drives me crazy. On the BBC i can get news about every corner of the globe.
Second. The cable news channels all show the exact same stories all day everyday. I don’t want to hear about some congressman’s affair all day. I want to hear analysis of the Palestian/Isreali issue or the Iranian elections.
Until networks and cable news channels start giving more in depth world news and less stories about affairs and missing spring break twenty somethings I’ll keep reading the BBC of Agence France Presse.
I think I can agree with AZTop about the tabloidization (if that’s a word) of local news. The whole mantra of “if it bleeds, it leads” is becoming more and more prominent in local news broadcasts. As a result, people are just flipping over to cable news for more pertinent national/international news, and are getting their local news online.
I don’t think it really has anything to do with the increasingly ‘leftward’ bias of the news – the media has ALWAYS traditionally been left wing, going as far back as the 30s and 40s. I don’t think people just “suddenly” realized how left wing most news orgs were.
The politicization of the networks has killed network news as a credible source. There is no such thing as a non-biased reporter anymore. They are incapable of reporting a story without injecting their own opinion and politics into it. Cronkite did not do that. As he said many times: “And that’s the way it is.” People want the facts, nothing more. There are no newsmen anymore, only editorializers and political reporters. The same thing is true of the newspapers. They too, are dying a much deserved death. RIP network news, New York Times, Denver Post, etc.
when I was a kid eating dinner with the folks, the news was all about Nixon, Vietnam and the Soviets wanting to nuke us. I’m sorry, but I don’t quite recall a time when there was news on TV that wasn’t “Gloom-and-Doom Headlines and Politics.” Did Grit have a network news channel?
Who exactly gave an opposing view when the anchor on Fox News who went on a rant about how pure races (like the folks in Finland) are better compared to our mongrel breeding in America? Looks up Brian Kilmeade’s recent comments and ponder why this guy is on a news channel? “We keep marrying other species” he declares. Is this the home school science genius you want give you the hard news?
No doubt the advent of 24 hour news on cable followed by instant news on the internet has caused the decline for a 30 minute newscast at 6:30pm EST. That time slot only fits one demographic anyhow, seniors. Anyone with a job knows that no one works the old 9 to 5 schedule that incorporated “Dad” turning on the news after “Mom” cooked dinner.
Those conditions have fostered a local newscast that is focused on weather, crime, and more weather. The local ABC affiliate here in Cincinnati is now turning to viewers to send in videos of “news” as well as equipping all their staff with a cheap video camera just in case they pass “news” on their daily travels.
The big question is, which major network will be the first to do away with it’s 6:30 EST newscast? They’ll keep a news division for the morning shows and prime time news shows as well as breaking news, but I think one of the Big Three will call it a day soon. (CBS would be my pick.)
To summarize, to this point, it looks like the reasons for evening news declines are, not necessarily in this order (and including a few of my own) as follows:
*Political bias in the news reports (real or perceived)
*Local and national news agencies shifting to “if it bleeds, it leads” mentality (real or perceived)
*Sensationalizing presentation of news (real or perceived), aka tabloid format.
*Quality control issues driven by a “be first, not factual” mentality in breaking news stories, which leads to inaccuracies, structurally flawed reports, lazy or nonexistent fact-checking, and embarrassing retractions (anyone remember the Sago Mine “miracle” declaration of 12 miners who survived? I do… and the correction later when it was only 1 survivor. Nice work, guys.) that can put doubt into the veracity of any work done by a news organization
*Quality control issues in reporters (political bias — perceived or real, celebrity status interfering with job requirements; less capable/competent/caring people doing the job; an apparent lack of knowledge in regard to what the words ethics, neutral, objective, journalism, and facts mean; reporters acting as advocates while doing their job — perceived or real)
*Layoffs and cost cutting undermining the news division’s abilities to do a proper job of gathering and reporting information
*Infotainment creep (news is now sold as entertainment, at least in part, and news readers, knowingly or otherwise, develop a set of acting voices and facial expressions that are used in different circumstances — violent crime, government issues, disasters, politics, etc)
*Advent and growth of Internet (mainly after 1995, but probably — can’t prove so supposing here — explosive growth of use as information source from 2000 onward)
*Advent and growth of non-over-the-air news channels (cable, satellite) including CNN and its siblings, Fox News, MSNBC, and financial networks (who sometimes deliver news as well)
*Advent and growth of non-over-the-air channels in general for people who don’t want to listen to or hear the news and are looking for viewing alternatives — as well as more original programming — on other channels (USA Network, SyFy {I HATE that renaming}, Lifetime, TLC, Disney, TNT, etc) for such people.
*Lifestyle changes (more 2 income families, standard daily routines no longer
apply in most homes i.e. 9-to-5 rare work schedule these days, folks simply tuning out to focus on their personal crises, such as layoffs, family problems, financial problems, etc)
*More gloom-and-doom delivered in the broadcasts resulting in a switched-off television so dinner can be enjoyed in peace. This is speculation on my part here but, this may be in part because of an increase (perceived or real) of disturbing images, including blood-soaked and/or mangled victims of war, crime, accidents, and so forth, aired on news presentations these days, and in much clearer picture and color (and now HDTV) quality. Who wants to look at that while having a spaghetti and meatballs dinner? This may tie in with the “if it bleeds” and “be first, not factual” situations.
Feel free to add or amend this list, of course
Oh, as for the nightly evening news broadcast… my personal opinion is that it should be dropped. 22 minutes to cover events of the day is about as helpful as a Discover card is to a coyote. Give the time to the locals and let them use it or run another game show, a local program of a positive nature, or even an infomercial. It would be a better use of the time. Just my opinion, free of charge
@Nightstar – I see three kinds of arguments happening in your work, some industrial arguments related to limited capital, textual arguments related to credibility and audience arguments related to the collapse of confidence/changing patterns in their lives.
Beside TV delivery methods there are some really telling historical linkages one could make to the graph, but those are neither here nor there.
@Partisans – perception of media bias is tied to self-perception of party position on an inverse relation. See several issues of communication quarterly from the late 80s.
@Folks who think about dinnertime – concur on experience, could this be the larger issue of life/time/shift which is undertheorized in the comment streams on dvrs and such.
without question internet and talk radio has killed tv news. why wait till 6:30 (5:30 for me in the central) for a wrap on the days events. the evening news needs to do a quick summary then do a anaylsis or talking points. similar to PBS Jim Leaher News Hour or The O’Reilly Factor. Thats what i watch. no wonder Fox News is number 1.
0
There are several factors that have most likely affected the prime time newscasts:
1. Political Bias (Left Leaning…when a majority of the population is moderate to conservative).
2. Internet. (Why tune in at a specific time when you can just go online and read the news you want to read).
3. Quality of the stories presented (How many specials about Obama, Michael Jackson, Obama, Obama, Obama etc…can one watch before being overly saturated)
4. Local Network News ( Most local broadcasts now have newscasts at 5pm and 6pm and 10pm)
5. 24 hour news from Foxnews, CNN, MSNBC, etc…. By the time 7pm comes up, what has changed?
“And that’s the way it is….” RIP Cronkite!
cronkite and his generation was just as biased, you just couldn’t tell because there were only three voices. now that alternatives are available, people are voting with their feet. not a big surprise.
Its not SyFy….its Syfy.
romo: Yep, typo on my part. Whoopsie. Still hate the name change, though, but thanks for the correction
A 6:30 newscast made sense for a world where people work 9 to 5. IMO, very few offices operate on that schedule anymore. Many people simply do not make it home in time to watch the evening news.
I think that’s part of the reason why O’Riley is so popular. He’s on at 8:00 which is more convenient for most working viewers.
Corey3rd: That kind of thing doesn’t happen from Fox anchors. It’s the kind of thing that comes out when dishonest leftists “reinterpret” Fox anchors along with the usual “smear the right wing, they all must be racists” routine. These dishonest people could turn “I like sunny days” into “light is good so light skin is better than dark.” Anyone on any network who made a statement like you described would be canned in a heartbeat, Fox included. I’m a regular viewer, would never tolerate something like that, and never saw it from a Fox anchor.
As to the real reason for the evening news decline, it’s EVERYTHING in this thread. Death by a thousand cuts.
Maybe…any one of the broadcast networks try a 8 PM ET news hour–hard news, not Mary Hart junk.
Just a wish.
My opinion: there hasn’t been ENOUGH killing of broadcast news.
Years ago, William Casey, the head of the CIA, declared – and he wasn’t joking – that the CIA owned or controlled ALL the major news outlets.
That may be conspiracy theory, but the fact is the so-called “news establishment” is fundamentally part of the system that controls society. It’s not and never was intended to be “investigative” or “confrontational” or anything like that, except occasionally on a local level (and not often there).
The Internet damaged the control of the news by allowing people to easily find alternative viewpoints, “suppressed” news, and the like. Of course, only a handful of people compared to “the great unwashed” do that. But it’s enough, along with the comedic lack of ability on the part of people like the various spastic news “anchors” which is painfully obvious to even the idiots watching, to cause broadcast news to go down.
People back in Cronkite’s day were simply naive enough to believe what he said and believe that he had any real clue about what was going on. Compare what was reported to what has been revealed in the history books and subsequent exposes and you can see that the news has always been manipulated and shaped.
All you can get from the conventional news these days is the “bare facts’ – if that. You’ll get nothing in terms of accurate explanations about what’s really going on.
Take the so-called “Iran crisis”. Anybody who researches the situation seriously will discover that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, and probably never had one. At best, they may have had a nuclear research DATABASE program – which is not surprising if you’re the military of a country threatened by another country with over 200 illegal, uncontrolled nuclear weapons (i.e., Israel), not to mention the world’s biggest superpower with thousands of nuclear weapons. You will search in vain for any indication in the mainstream press that this is the true situation. Instead, any event concerning this issue will be reported from the assumption that Iran is in fact pursuing a nuclear weapons development and deployment program. We have a President and a Secretary of State and numerous Congressmen declaring this to be absolutely true. And in fact, it’s not.
So where is “investigative journalism” on this issue? No where to be found.
You can’t kill broadcast news too soon.
Old people watch the news and listen to the radio. Young people go online for the news.
There’s a big difference being fed partisan news (Fox News) and going online and looking up different news sites all over (grassroots, blogs, news agencies) and getting all of the answers instead of being fed partisan news (Fox News).
That’s why you do not see young people ever watching Fox News, it’s a dinosaur and they haven’t adapted to the new technology (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
I get all the news I need from FOX news at any time of the day…why bother with CBS, ABC or NBC?
i guess this is why news comments are always closed…
Let’s not forget the role independent TV stations were having in their local markets with counterprogramming. Shows like The Cosby Show and many others gave audiences an alternative viewing choice.
The Media, IMO is a “Dinosuar” I get my news onlike, receiving only what I wish to know about. Nothing that I do not want to see or hear is “Rammed down my Throat”. Same thing for Entertainment. Since I dropped my subscription to Cable TV I have accumulated over 12,000 Hours of Entertainment on DVDs. There is no such thing as “Nothing Good on TV Today” in my House!:D
@Partisans – besides the self-perception arguments, think of your argument in the whole scheme of the television system, CBS+NBC+ABC+CNN+MSNBC > FOX+CNBC, by about 10 to 1, even on its own, CBS doubles up FOX if not much, much more. And with Sinclair stations teetering on the edge of bankruptcy (I think its a bluff, but they are close enough to make it credible) the Conservative wing of broadcast TV isn’t doing well. Bias arguments are more about the writer than the media ecology in the first place.
Dan: CNBC is conservative? If only. I can’t comment on Sinclair stations’ programming since I have never seen it, but it seems like Fox News is the only place that has even tried having hosts who are more right than left in the news, where every other place either has a brief debate or goes entirely to the right. This level of respect to an underserved audience is probably why they dominate cable ratings. MSNBC took its own aggressively partisan tactic recently and achieved great success with that, but not even close to Fox.
It seems that the best way to beat Fox’s ratings would be to have a competing conservative news network – not one that is balanced with constant guests from all sides, as Fox has, but only conservative guests. Give that large, committed audience more of what made Fox News a hit. The fact that such an obvious opening for market leadership exists, but that no one has attempted it (except its near mirror opposite in MSNBC) says a lot about the biases in the media and the decline of Broadcast Evening News than it does about the people who notice this.
Richard Steven Hack: I agree that reporting isn’t that great, but getting all one’s reporting from the Internet isn’t the greatest either. Internet people can make things up to appeal the biases of their audiences even more transparently then Dan Rather’s “false but accurate” reporting due to the smaller audience’s smaller chance for collective oversight.
What does this mean for the future of news? Maybe Iran doesn’t have nukes. Or maybe the moon landing never occurred. Who knows what will be reported and how it will shape elections?
For the first time I’m wondering whether the decline of broadcast news is truly a bad thing.
Or truly a good thing, that is.
Even though I don’t think Robert/Bill intended this to be a left/right discussion, CNBC is most definitely conservative.
It is interesting (and sad) to see how many posters here rip on Fox News as being partisan when MSNBC does FAR worse on the left side and is blatant about it. MSNBC doesn’t even attempt to be “fair and balanced”. Look how it covered the last Republican Convention. It was so bad that even NBC management couldn’t pretend they weren’t overly biased and publicly apologized for the convention “coverage” (aka attack-age) by Chris Matthew and Keith Olbermann and said they wouldn’t be covering such events again. You know your coverage is horribly biased if that happens. And CNN is only a hair better than MSNBC. Look at how CNN covered the recent Tea Parties if you think they’re unbiased.
Possibly part of the problem is that reporters are human. Yes, yes, I’m serious. I honestly think that reporters … for the most part … are human. And being human, they cannot forever stand on the sidelines and not “do” something. They feel they know better. The reason they feel they know better is that they feel they are more informed due to constantly covering the news. Feeling they’re better informed and thus wiser, better educated, and you know they think they’re smarter than anyone else, they feel it is their duty to lead us unwashed masses to the truth and right way. They think things are too important to leave it up to us simple-minded common folk to make the major decisions so they “help” us make it. They “interpret” the news for us. They present what they think is important. And this is why us the public think they’re biased and we are right.
What I think is a great development is the internet and how it is now giving voice to many others. Saying this as an realist (a.k.a. atheist that doesn’t believe in an afterlife), god bless bloggers. I think they’re the future of news. They definitely don’t let the mainstream news get away with as many falsehoods as they did in the past. This pointing out that the emperor isn’t wearing clothes has hurt the reputation of mainstream news, but that’s good. They really weren’t wearing clothes and it is great that people are now pointing this out.
Where is the news headed? That’s hard to say. I think bloggers will be a major part of it. As more and more us advertisers start paying to advertise on news blogs, more of them will go full-time and news coverage will improve. I look forward to the day when news bloggers are jetting all over the world to cover breaking news, when they’re the major at Presidential news conferences, and when Google News lists them first.
Let’s not have this devolve into right vs. left mudslinging, or I’ll close the comments rather than spend the time to moderate them.
While Walter Cronkite may have been a liberal, he didn’t let that get in the way of doing his real job, and that was to report the news. These days, the news takes a backseat to the anchors. That is a huge part of the media’s problem these days. Celebrity USA has taken over, in place of the news. And yes, there are 24 hour cable channels, so you don’t need to wait for the nightly news anymore. But, why in the world, would people lower themselves to watch CNN & PMSNBC? Both of those organ grinders, are not news organizations. They are CRAP!
Well, thanks to people like myself, network news is not totally dead. What has impacted ratings are longer commute and/or working hours, the internet and cable networks (who do go on and on about one story, never letting it end until the next “story” comes along). The best part of network news broadcasts is that is straight reporting, without personal commentary, and the human interest stories they still report.
Burn-e – watch the clip of Brian Kilmeade. it’s online. He talks about “we [Americans] keep marrying other species.” He declares “Swedes have pure genes.” This isn’t politics, this is a Fox anchor being ignorant and spreading his stupidity to viewers. We don’t marry other species. and the Swedes back during their Viking days brought back women from their plunders,
Even his forced apology didn’t address his ignorance.
Unless you think Kilmeade was right about Americans marrying other species?
It is interesting for sure…I have to believe a major factor is credibility. The internet certainly has contributed, but I suspect a credibility is a major issue for broadcast and print news media. I used to love the physical act of reading a newpaper. Sit outside, cup of coffee and the paper. I stopped because I just got the feeling that I can no longer believe anything I read because of bias. Not to mention that your hands become really dirty.
Interesting Corey3rd. Kilmeade is an inexcusable nut. I never saw him before, so at least I’m greatful for that. During the Imus firing there were bloggers who cataloged a long list of his previous, equally offensive remarks that MSNBC were apparently okay with, since dozens of things happened long before his comments on the basketball players. Maybe the morning shows have far different standards from the later news?
Smearing Fox News for ignoring that comment is like smearing MSNBC for all the comments Imus made that they had ignored until Al Sharpton stepped in. But then again, this is an article about network news decline, so they all should be smeared.
My fear is that news will become like PANA. Has anyone read the syndicated feed from the Pan African News Association? Every article is an editorial opinion with a snippet of facts, but there’s little fact checking since Africa is so spread out that it is expensive to verify information, but it’s cheap just to ask someone for some spot news. Maybe PANA is the network news future, cheap but shallow.
For those of you who just want the news without opinion, that’s what Headline News did on cable for years…until opinion became more profitable. If you think you’re living the good life with Google News and Yahoo News (all of whom copy the AP feed) then just wait until they’re underbid like PANA underbids Reuters’ correspondents. It will be a total info meltdown.
Burn-E, do you know the difference between race and species? the fact is that Fox News let Kilmeade babble about something he knows nothing about and he gets the basic terms WRONG. This isn’t about him giving a purified race speech, but a pure species rant. He’s a moron and given hours to kill on an alleged news network.
Kilmeade is a moron who shouldn’t be allowed to speech unscripted since he can’t get basic science or history right. He’s Jessica Simpson dumb
at least at the end of PTI, stat boy corrects any facts that were screwed up during the show,
A viewer should want a news channel to get terms right.
The leftist agenda is what’s killing the networks news divisions.
On a new computer and forgot to do the address, so my thirty words will be boiled down to a few, ( Yayyy!) The emphasis on sensationalism and lurid personalities was already in TV news b/c of technical limits way before desert Storm, OJ and Anna Nichole. ( What if Murrow had been wrong and not right?) I find it hard to believe people who visit this site haven’t seen Broadcast News, but around them the shallowness of 80’s news and society in general ( all the more adopted by Hollywood because Reagen was in office, possibly) was an acceptable theme for pop culture, and maybe the only real source of reliable satire then as now.
BTW – Bill, keeping this nonpolitical is a noble effort. Apparently doomed, but noble nonetheless.
It appears that no noe commenting on Kilmeade have ever watched him before. Let me try to inject a little clarity into this situation.
1. Kilmeade is NOT an anchor. He is the sports guy on the Fox News morning show, Fox and Friends.
2. One of Kilmeade’s scthicks is that he openly and probably knowingly says stupid and sometimes insensitive things. He regularly bungles introductions, interviews and frequently “misreads” the teleprompter. No one that regularly watches the Fox AM show takes anything that Kilmeade says seriously. He plays a buffoon on such a constant basis. For anyone to use him as an example of normal Fox anchors is an act of ignorance in and of itself.
3. The comments made re: Kilmeade here are the result of someone that doesn’t watch Fox News probably watching a Youtube clip that they probably were linked to by some left wing friend that doesn’t watch Fox News either.
I’m late to this party but I would suggest that you compare combined viewership of the three nightly newscasts to combined viewership of the same networks in primetime over the last four decades.
I haven’t done this exercise myself but I think you will find that nightly news has held up better under the pressure of fragmentation than entertainment programming.
Viper – That sheds a totally different light on the comments. It was dumb not to consider the raw nerves on the topic but it might not be unforgivable considering what you described. I can see why he wasn’t fired on the spot now.
Mikey – It would be interesting to compare the rating share rather than population, since the US population had gone way up since then. Over the decades on the chart ABC apparently increased in viewership! Although I doubt it was an increase in share you’re probably right that it was WAY less of a hit than I and others in the thread might have thought.
Kilmeade is as much of an anchor as anyone else on the Fox morning show. Don’t degrade the third head on the sofa
The man spewed a purely ignorant statement. Marrying species? And his statement went uncorrected by the producers and news editors. It’s a case of verbal diarrhea from a moron. It’s not like he was hired to be part of Howard Stern’s Wack Pack.
How stupid do you have to be to make Steve Doocy look smart? And would that person be able to tie their shoelaces. Would the have to keep a drool bucket on their lap?
It is nice to know that people can just write off a “pure species” rant as merely schtick.
Never said Kilmeade wasn’t a dumbass, in fact that was my point. He regularly plays the buffoon, and is not to be taken seriously. He regularly says stupid things, sometimes they turn out funny, this time it was just ignorant.
Kilmeade’s job isn’t to make Doocey look smart, it’s to read the sports scores and introduce guests etc. He frequently screws up at all of these things. As he has not been fired for screwing up the sports reports, which is his main job, then the management aparently expects and tolerates his buffoonery.
None of this means that Fox News is forever tainted by his continued employment, unless NBC News is forever tainted for using the footage of rigged exploding fuel tanks in pickup trucks or CBS is forever tainted by the forged documents in the George Bush National Guard story. The list goes on and on but this comment is long enough already.
For the record the smart one on the Fox and Friends show is the blonde chick anyway.
What is needed in TV news on any channel is a disclaimer before or after EACH “reporter” or “news analyst” gives his or her opinion: “The views are of (reporter/commentator), not necessarily (channel).”
News and opinion is too mixed up today.
Not a bad idea Bob. If I may I’d like to suggest a refinement to your plan. How about a flashing notice warning “Opinion” when the news reader starts to opine with a similar notice of “News” when they are reporting the traditional who, what when where and why aspects of a story. That way silly personal comments, personal bias or jokes that flop won’t be mistaken for part of a news story.
Warning about opinion or humor segments seems too Hot Coffee Lawsuit for me. It is obvious during a show. The only benefit to it is when something is taken out of context. But that has more to do with partisans who yell “GOTCHA!” whenever something is off color because they only see it out of context on YouTube or a so-called watchdog group’s web page.
Of course the word “opinion” should be burned into everyone’s screens, no matter which news show they watch. Reporters are human and almost always let their own biases slip in. When they DON’T show their biases and opinions, that’s when the alarm bells should ring…but that will be a rarity.
Unfortunately we no longer have a free press in this country. It’s now just the media wing of the democrat party. The only time you’ll see the networks ask any hard questions from Obama or any other democrat it comes from the far left. The networks don’t even try to hide their vicious anti Americanism, anti freedom, and anti liberty ideology anymore.
Something I haven’t heard commented on is, in the current political state, Fox News is the only network that is openly critical of the government.
However you feel about bias one way or the other, always remember that the network news and CNN are the places to tune in if you want to know how handsome, talented and hard-working all of your elected officials are.
What an easy answer–the “big three” are so biased in their news reporting! I simply don’t trust them. Thank G_d for the Internet!!
When you are ideologically driven from the top down as these stations are, what else can you expect…note that the “trash” shows get better results than the faux news normally broadcast. I may not have known what bias meant in my early twenties, but I have known since my late thirties….I don’t watch any “primetime” news…I get more news with several points of view and facts consistently over ABC/CBS/NBC/PBS/CNN/MSNBC using the Internet. Plus, I get to tell the authors what I think in most instances…that is a boon!! So, why bother? I quit bothering a long time ago.
Puzzling . . .
Network ratings (from this article and almost any other honest source) are DOWN
Newspaper sales (EXCEPT Wall Street Journal) of the top 25 Newspapers DOWN
What other common characteristics of these markets are consistent?
Perhaps political affiliation? (over 95% of “journalists” in these markets are reportedly Democrat).
Perhaps the reality is that your customers just don’t like your product and, they are moving their attention to other markets:
Fox News. Once, (not too long ago) they didn’t even exist! Now they set ratings records. Why?
AM Radio: In the 1960’s when FM broadcasting took off, this segment was D E A D!
What happened? Conservative talk radio started and revived a dying dinosaur, the AM radio band. Now AM Talkradio hosts set virtually all the ratings records in their timeslots and advertisers line up to pay for the process.
Puzzling. It must be hard to look in the mirror (if you are one of the “journalists”) each day and realize . . . I am a dinosaur. I am out of touch with my customer base.
remember: ube sunt
How in the world could we think that the current Nielsen ratings are accurate? They seem to be stuck, week after week with the numbers for the political shows. But what about folks like me who capture shows via DVR or TVO and watch them later (without commercials)? What about all the young people who watch things in dorms or in houses where roommates come and go. No, my guess is that the way the ratings are done reflect the political base of the owners of Nielsen and that the outcome reflects what they want it to reflect.
How could we better capture the number of viewers? Could the cable companies capture the data by knowning what channel is actively being watched and/or captured? That could yield larger, more accurate numbers.
George, if you’re a Nielsen family, your DVR viewing is measured and reported. Your guesses are wrong.