There were some requests recently in our cable news ratings comments for a comparison of the Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly ratings since Beck joined Fox News. I think the comparison is extremely apples to oranges because of the different timeslots (plus, they’re not competing with each other, except perhaps in an A-Rod/Jeter way), but Reader Dave was motivated to produce the chart, so take it for what it’s worth.
The trend lines above are 30 day moving averages.
This is a collaboration between two of our readers. Reader Dave created the chart using the data patiently assembled by reader MikeS.
For complete information on all cable news ratings check our daily cable news ratings posts.
Anybody else wanting to produce trend charts of any of our other data, drop me an email.
Nielsen Cable Network Coverage Estimates (as of September, 2009)
CNN/HLN: 99.10 million HHs
CNBC: 96.78 million HHs
FNC: 96.26 million HHs
MSNBC: 92.64 million HHs
Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
I think they are both a wonderful assest to the Fox News Channel, and it is so nice to see that they both have enormous respect for one another. Go Fox!
Wow, Thanks. Does anyone think its possible Glenn can pass O’Reilly?
Oh, and Karen, you need to stop watchnig MSNBC. lol.
I forgot to ask, do you guys have the numbers for Friday? I’m curious to see what effect the whole “war on Fox” did for Fox’s ratings.
@ Bluto, it’s a hilarious hypocrisy that you say “why don’t you libs try to form an actual argument instead of name-calling” and you end your rant by saying liberals live in their mom’s basement ‘waiting for that first date”.
Hypocrisy is everywhere.
I forgot to ask, do you guys have the numbers for Friday? I’m curious to see what effect the whole “war on Fox” did for Fox’s ratings.
Friday’s ratings won’t be available until Monday afternoon.
@ Mick
Pew research did a study of cable news viewers a while back, and guess what they found.
O’Reilly’s viewers were the most knowledgable. FOX viewers in general edged just ahead of CNN, while MSNBC was found to have the least knowledgable viewers. Go to their website and look it up yourself.
And of course you’ll get alot of hits. Most liberals are people under 30 who seem to think that by spammin websites like this one, it’ll help your cause. And Jon Stewart? Really? And I thought libs were supposed to hate stereotypism.
Some forget that Jon Stewart’s show is joke news. Beck is saying what needs to be said and that’s why his ratings are so high. He refuses to lie or tow the party line like most commentators on the other networks and it’s paying off.
Mick,
By “googling” your “Fox news, most uninformed,”…. all you’re doing is reading liberal talking points.
We need to go to sites that are NOT, in any way partisan.
Fox: Fairly Unbalanced! Seriously, it appears both O’s and Beck’s ratings trends follow one another? Like Bill said, “apples to oranges” but nice to know none the less. I’m sure the radical Conservatives will twist this latest info to suit their irrational justifications. Fun to watch!
Brady Bunch ratings on tvland?
Lucy ratings on hallmark?
Any airing is fine.
Just curious not the end of my life.
From all the studies I have seen it is age and sex that seems to make the most informed viewers.
Who Knows News? What You Read or View Matters, but Not Your Politics
Pew Research Center tested the public’s political knowledge earlier this year, the best-informed news audiences crossed the ideological spectrum. Nearly half of regular readers of The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Harper’s Magazine (48%) answered three political knowledge questions correctly. Regular listeners of NPR (44% three correct), and regular viewers of Hardball (43%) and Hannity & Colmes (42%) also fared well compared with other news audiences.
While majorities in most news audiences knew that the Democrats have a majority in the House, regular viewers of Hannity & Colmes (84%), and listeners of Rush Limbaugh’s radio program (83%) scored best on this question.Large proportions of regular Hannity & Colmes viewers (73%) and Limbaugh listeners (71%) also identified Rice as the secretary of state; regular NPR listeners (72%) and readers of The New Yorker and other elite magazines (71%) also did well on this question.
Seems you can watch Fox or listen to Rush and end up knowing as much as the viewers of NPR.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/993/who-knows-news-what-you-read-or-view-matters-but-not-your-politics
Do you have any data for the Beck rebroadcast at 2:00 am east, 11:00 pm pacific?
RUKidding, we post all the daily cable news ratings we get.
CNN can be fun watched on Fox watched on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLcaielYL7U
Cool! What would be *really* interesting is to do a chart comparing Beck’s ratings when he was on CNN and Beck’s ratings on FNC. No idea if you guys have those numbers – and I’m not aware of his timeslot on CNN, so that comparison might be too iffy – but it’d be interesting to look at his performance at CNN vs. FNC.
There certainly seems to be a sharp upward trend as of August. Was that just the healthcare issue?
I also wonder if the Beck-O’Reilly cross-pollination has an appreciable effect. I think Beck is on O’Reilly’s show almost every week; I wonder if that sends O’Reilly viewers his way.
lynn said “fox viewers are misinformed”
Yeah, and all republicans are dumb racist rednecks, and conservatives are simply mentally retarded. *droll*
I contend that since FOX is the ONLY network that report ALL the news – good or bad for the president – that FOX viewers are the most informed. If you watch CNN or MSNBC, you didn’t hear about the massive ACORN corruption until 5 days after FOX viewers (when the census droped them and the senate defunded them). In fact CNN/MSNBC went after the journalists who exposed ACORN.
CNN/MSNBC viewers didn’t even know who Van Jones was until after he resigned. CNN/MSNBC viewers probably still don’t know who Anita Dunn ideolizes. They don’t know about Mark Sustien, Rahm Emanuel, Goerge Sorros($$$), Mark Lloyed….; should I go on? All they know is that potente Obama won the peace prize, those “EVIL REPUBLICANS” want you to die from no health care, and balloon boy in the attic.
Billkid, I call BS.
Where’d you get that? mediamatters?
Glenn said that Anita ideolizing Moa would be like me saying one of my favorite political philosophers is adolf hitler, have you read mien komph?
Headline on mediamatters was something like: “Does Glenn Beck ideolize Adolf Hitler?”
lol. That’s what the left does best.
I see the White House staffers have joined the ranks here!
Thank you for the chart Bill and Reader Dave! It does seem that the trends for Beck were unusually good for news but appear to be leveling off to nearly the same increases/decreases as O’Reilly toward the end. Due to the time slot, only if Beck does something particularly interesting (his analysis of Obama appointees in their own speeches/books/interviews/etc) vs. a normal O’Reilly day, that looks like his best chance to beat O’Reilly.
But that’s not entirely impossible. In fact, given his extensive coverage of video recordings of little-known speeches by Obama’s appointees as they praise mass murdering communists, that alone is enough of a shock that he could build serious ratings juice. “Guess who in Obama’s team praised Chairman Mao” is becoming a recurring thing, and (at least with Van Jones) Beck had been getting results.
Watching Glenn Beck has been like watching the political topics that will be covered by the mainstream media next month. The more he gets to catch big people in their own words, the closer Beck will be to beating O’Reilly.
Mick,
You’ve taken poll results from April 15, 2007. Long before Beck came unto the Fox scene. If you’re going to research polls, Fox, data, etc. please try to be current. All you do is make a fool of yourself. Especially when you post the link for readers.
Aren’t there enough other places on the web for those who want to troll? I mean seriously, has anything “Mick” said been even vaguely related to the post itself or ratings in general?
On the topic, I think Glenn Beck has been brilliant in making himself into “the face of the Obama Administration’s opposition”. I don’t agree with a lot of his claims (the “Cars for Clunkers site spying on you” was just stupid) but from the trend stand point you can see his ratings have essentially been a hockey stick since he started playing hard ball with them.
It’s no wonder the Obama administration has been trying to discredit Fox News (which I generally think is stupid because it makes them look weak and anyone watching Glenn Beck regularly probably wasn’t going to vote for them anyway)
Don’t forget Beck is on at 5pm EST….What would happen in OReilly’s spot.
You are talking 2pm on the left coast…and still garnering almost 3 million people
Eterna1Soldier says:
October 18, 2009 at 1:42 pm
“CNN/MSNBC viewers probably still don’t know who [sic] Anita Dunn ideolizes [sic]. They don’t know about Mark Sustien [sic], Rahm Emanuel, Goerge [sic] Sorros [sic] ($$$), Mark Lloyed [sic]….; should I go on?”
By all means. Your onna role with these Moaists.
Tom says:
October 18, 2009 at 2:44 pm
I don’t agree with a lot of his claims (the “Cars for Clunkers site spying on you” was just stupid)…
Well his reporting of it may have been exaggerated slightly on the spying part, but it is FACT that the disclaimer that was ORIGINALLY on the website DID state (in part) that by “enrolling/registering, that your computer would be considered property of the US government”. They didn’t remove it until AFTER Beck raised the issue and he even let us know on what day they removed it.
Don’t try to spin the facts please. Through a close friend of mine who is a sales manager at my Chevy dealer, that disclaimer DID exist and “mysteriously” dissapeared days after the start of the program.
Personally, I don’t want to go onto ANY site that would make such a bold claim as to the posibility, enforcable by (their) law, that the owner of that site can take possesion of MY property and subsequent records contained within whenever they felt like it. All Glenn did was state that by the use of “tracking cookies” and other methods, it was possible for the Feds to monitor where, what, who and when. We already have “tracking cookies” in our computers now! DUH! But they don’t have the Feds signature on them!
Yes, it’s camparing apples and oranges here.
Wouldn’t at least comparing percent of total viewership be at least a little closer to a fair comparison?
Boris: “by all means, you’re on a roll”
Thanks Boris. Lets see, there’s Obama’s ACORN connection, SEIU connection, the radicals in the Apollo Alliance that wrote the stimulus bill (one of which is a wheather underground member), Judge Sotomyer’s obsession with “social justice”,
All of which was not covered by the establishment media.
Eterna1Soldier wrote: “… probably still don’t know who Anita Dunn ideolizes…”
I’ve heard that she idolizes Dung, Mao Tse Dung. Or is it Dong, Mao Tse Dong?? Anita: “if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao, you ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow. [Lennon-McCartney]“
Glenn would I like to know is why do the seniors of America get $250.00 and no rise and have a 3 month gap in medicare and cost them hundreds of dollars out of pocket money and Afghanistan gets $7.9 BILLION.And they only have time to talk about you and your up front news the only reason the local news don’t say what you say is they are afraid they will lose their sponsors. They might think they are getting a pay check now but wait till the government gets done with them…You are our voice of America for America and don’t ever forget that.My father said that this was happening in America 35 years ago and pretty soon they will be telling us where to go to the bathroom and how much toilet paper we can use.. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK GLENN….
Why is it we keep taking care of people who don’t like us but we turn our back on the elderly and our troops when they come back injured ??
Why you do the comparison? What is the purpose? Do you want to hurt some one?
Where are all the lefties at that wanna break the rules and talk politics? Mike B created a forum here for us: http://www.voyagertrans.com/forum1/index.php So far its only us conservatives there. No Liberals have dared sign up.
Also, there was a nother salvo of shots fired by the administration at Fox today on CNN.
Lets see if Beck’s phone rings this week!
Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly are my favorites on Fox!
So I guess many posts were deleted…. lol. Sorry I missed them.
It is odd comparing Beck and O’Reilley considering the time differences. What is perhaps the only interesting thing I observed is that Beck’s numbers are on a steeper increase. What that means I have no idea. Maybe it is due to the free publicity the White House is giving him. Many people had never head of Beck until rather recently and are thus curious to see what he is really like. Personally, I prefer to read the news, but I have been tuning into FOX occasionally now out of curiosity – I find the whole thing with the White House and FOX fascinating. With regard to the administration, I feel like I am watching someone methodically dig his own grave and then create a clever mechanism that allows dirt to effortlessly fall into the death chamber on him. It is in the their best interest to not attack the press – but they just can’t help it. It is fascinating.
Eterna1Soldier says:
“Boris: ‘by all means, you’re on a roll’”
That’s not what I wrote.
“Thanks Boris. Lets see, there’s Obama’s ACORN connection, SEIU connection, the radicals in the Apollo Alliance that wrote the stimulus bill (one of which is a wheather [sic] underground member), Judge Sotomyer’s [sic] obsession with ’social justice’,
“All of which was not covered by the establishment media.”
You might want to draw a distinction between what you were unaware of and what was not covered. For example, ignorance of the “ACORN connection” defies credulity–hell, it’s part of the reason I didn’t vote for Obama in 1996, not because of some weird conspiracy theory, but because they were well-known nitwits. If you instead refer to the *demonization* of ACORN, that may well be novel.
Similarly, the 2008 Obama endorsement by SEIU was widely reported before it even happened. He’s a politician in the school of the Chicago Democratic machine?! Quelle surprise! Again, the hysterical spin may be novel, but the “connection” was not.
The Jeff Jones one, I’ll give you, is pretty good. Roughly as important as identification of the Trotskyist/Shachtmanite neocon axis, but it was attentive of Trevor Loudon to make the initial misidentification. And it does make one wonder why the much more “successful” terrorist Orlando Bosch is running around free, for that matter.
Sotomayor is an extremely weak example, on the other hand, as the whole thing was taken apart six ways to Sunday by the “establishment media.”
Charlie says:
“Where are all the lefties at that wanna break the rules and talk politics? Mike B created a forum here for us: http://www.voyagertrans.com/forum1/index.php So far its only us conservatives there. No Liberals have dared sign up.”
You sound like a barker outside of a strip club that doesn’t have a liquor license.
Put Them Togethe.
My only concern about FOX is that they have to many opinion shows and not enough hard news. I love BECK HANNITY and HUCKABEE but I wish they would gut a few personailities for hard news. Take out Cavuito and put him on FBN also America’s Newsroom needs to be hard news.
When they have hard news its great Fox News Sunday and Special Report rock
O’Reilly has a classic double bottom formation. Looking at it as if it were a stock. Beck had huge rocket launch formation off a U shaped bottom. O’Reilly better watch out, Beck is showing signs of eventually overtaking him in a year or 2. Considering Beck was pretty much an unknown a year ago, hes had quite and impact.
FOX’s commentary/opinion shows arent just opinions, they do provide hard news with the commentary giving their opinion and guests on both sides to argue each side of the story. The reason why other such shows dont do well, is they provide one sided commentary and spend alot of time bashing their competition.
FOX airs their hard news shows during the day until 8pm (Beck at 5pm being the exception). They should move Beck to pm and Hannity 7pm.
This site’s comment section is breaking my heart. Go ahead and be as conservative as you want to be, but my god… why are there so many people, conservative or otherwise, who believe Fox News, a station that backs up insane conspiracy theories and actually reports PROVABLE lies? If you ever watched another station, you’d know that you were hearing news that is not remotely news – it’s just lies created to rile you up. Glenn Beck is a man who believes that the Americorps is “Obama’s Secret Army.” The fucking volunteer Americorps! It’s a bunch of lazy college kids doing volunteer work! This man should be locked away not on our televisions.
I agree with Bad Robot’s chart analysis. The chart seems to imply that Beck is a juggernaut, and even just a tiny hour or two delay in his time slot might make him the biggest show in cable news. I suspected this when looking at the daily ratings numbers and the chart makes it all the more believable.
Doug,
Tolerance for dissension is grand, isn’t it? Take it easy, go beat a djembe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou4lgW0M2n0
How can you compare the two hosts when O’Reilly plays in prime time where the largest audience is watching? Beck has far fewer viewers available when he airs. Beck is a ratings monster waiting to happen (or be rewarded with a prime time slot!).
Cavuto at 4 is a conservative as well
Doug, do you mean lies like that Van Jones is a radical?? or that ACORN has major problems. Oh yea those “lies” turned out to be 100% TRUE!!! Not that the other “news” org. covered them until well after they broke. I bet you have never watched Glenn, you just base your opinion on what others state he has said or done, or you see just snippets on you tube out of context. If you do not believe what Glenn is saying, feel free not to watch. To “lock” one up for not agreeing with you seems a little fascist to me. Seems like CBS news does a great job of reporting the facts like that phoney story and documents about Bush and his time in the national guard. Is that “real” news to you. Please list all of the fox news stories based on forged documents!!! Pew research polls have consistently shown Fox to be the most fair and balanced in its news reporting (which is separate from the opinion shows.) What do you have other than your opinion and media matters.
They should move Glenn to 7pm est and just move Special Report and Fox Report back an hour from their current slots. It’s not like they’re doing well anyway, ratings spike during Glenn then fall for 2 hours, then spike again during O’Reilly.
I don’t know, I have a feeling Fox doesn’t want Glenn to overtake Bill’s “the number 1 cable news show” slogan yet. I think he’ll easily become more popular than Bill if they move him up 2 hours so people can actually watch him. 5pm eastern is such a bs timeslot.
Wow! Foxnews has huge ratings! whuppeee! Granted, Foxnews has the ratings but they had these ratings in August, September, and October of 2008 and that didn’t transfer into votes for FOXNEWS’ political agenda. So I say (other than the advertisers), who cares?
Marvin…the only agenda foxnews has is the truth. They were “out done” by the massive hoax by MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, and almost every newspaper in America in 2008….with non reporting on Obama and the “hate bush” agenda they pushed, he won. BUT….alotta of people have realized the hoax, opening their eyes and are seeing firsthand why you NEVER put liberals in power. Thanks, in part, to the news reporting by fox. If these are lies, why cant anyone prove them wrong?? Seriously. Pick a topic, do your OWN research and you’ll come to the same conclusion. Kinda scary huh….the truth always is.
cammy,
I did run the Beck before/after CNN plot. He ran a pretty flat average in the 7:00pm time slot of about 500K up to October 16th, 2008 when he left CNN. He started at FOX on January 19th, 2009 running around 2M viewers as shown above.
There is nothing else remarkable about the chart, so I probably won’t send it in unless I see lots of requests. I’ve been holding out on this one for awhile because of the apples/oranges issues, but I kept seeing requests so I gave in.
From the comments stated above, it amazes me that Americans like to spin-off hate. Example? Look at the number of viewers who watch an imbecile like Glenn Beck. There is no way that the majority of their viewers are knowledgeable…No way! Glenn Beck and producers continue to show who they are. No wonder American people view Fox Cable as partisan fronts for the far right rebublican party. Beck, hannity and O’Reily would not know truth if it hit them in the eye! They are jokes. O’Reily at least tries to maintain a fraction of journalism. The others are pathetic…no worthy news organization has any respect for them. Please get it right sometimes, Fox!
cat7722: you are so brainwashed, it is hilarious. plenty of people have debunked the lies made by fox news and exposed them for their far-right agenda, but you foxbots never want to believe it. you think when i show you evidence of fox news lying, you arent going to shoot it down and deny it ever happened? people have been doing it for years now, and still the same fox news viewers continue to believe the network’s BS and defend them. thats what always happens… we disprove you, and you just turn a blind eye and act like it never happened. so, you know what? i will not give you the satisfaction this time and waste my time to make you look bad because you will go into a raging denial anyway. go back to your wingnut paranoia of truth that doesnt exist at fox news.
and dont worry about obama… there is no “hoax” going on. you are just crazy with all the conspiracy theories that glenn beck shoves down your throat.
and if we are talking about proving someone wrong, prove me and everyone else wrong on how terrible obama is. go ahead, pick a topic, do some REAL research (rather than believing the obama-haters), and see what you come up with.
it is very simple–
FOX NEWS PROPOGATED, PROMOTED AND PUSHED THE TEA BAGGERS ‘FAUX’ MOVEMENT—
FOX NEWS IS NOT NEWS–IT IS TABLOID NONSENSE JUST LIKE THE NEW YORK POST–ALSO OWNED BY MURDOCH—
ANYONE WHO DOES NOT KNOW THAT FOX NEWS IS NOT IN BED WITH THE GOP–IS JUST LYING TO THEMSELVES..
EVERY FAILED REPUBLICAN, TURN COAT DEMOCRAT AND/OR TRAITOR AMERICAN HAS BEEN HIRED BY FOX–
FROM OLLIE NORTH WHO SOLD WEAPONS TO TERRORISTS TO WEASEL MORRIS BOY WHO BACK STABBED THE CLINTONS TO ROVE WHO HELPED SEND AMERICA INTO AN ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL DARK AGES..NOT TO MENTION THE LONG LIST OF WACKED OUT RIGHT WINGED COMMENTATORS-TOO MANY TO MENTION
-AND ALL SPEWING RADICAL LIES FOR PROFIT-
if anyone want to congratulate Fox on HIGH ratings…
guess what the top shows are in America?
WRESLTING, REALITY AND DAYTIME SPRINGER TYPES…
so i guess it fits..
also get a list of conservative talkers—9 of 10 of the top radical right propogandist are regulars on fox ie coulter,liddy, savage,Ingrahams etc..
so yes tabloid sells–
Jerry Springer, WWF and Fox news gets rating..
and America ranks very low in education compared to the rest of the modern world–we should all be real proud–
Wow! The White House’s Revolutionary Net Guard is quite active tonight.
The ratings add up to squat. The viewers are less than 2% of the population. Not enough to win elections. But I guess enough to advertise gold schemes and erectile dysfunction. My theory is, people watch Fox because they can’t read.
It sure took a long time for libs to jump on here and then they came in droves, sounds about right: their organizer probably wasn’t made aware of this article for a few days and then he busted out his phone tree. The funny thing is: they use hateful speech to talk about how hateful Beck and O’Reilly are. Like Pam who can’t believe all the hate, amazed at the number of people that watch an imbecile like Beck. That doesn’t sound hateful at all, does it? You may not agree with Beck, but he will explain WHY he believes the way he does, with facts. Agree or disagree, he is not dishonest and he goes out of his way to provide evidence for his arguments.
BTW, conservative extremists should be referred to as reactionary, not radical. That term is used for leftist extremism, which is just as bad. BOTH ARE BAD.
BTW, Fox News is not nearly as far right as MSNBC is far left, but that seems to be OK. I don’t get that. Even if this country were center-left, a far left news network would be just as dangerous to the country as a far right news network.
O’Reilly is a watered down effete snob. Anytime a good guest comes on to debate him he goes soft, and puts on his smarmy condescending middle ground tone. He only takes a no cross line on safe conservative issues like The Troops, Abortion, and Guns. Every night he pigeon holes his on air emails to one pinhead who disagrees with him, and at least four who think “Bold Fresh” is actually worth reading. I do however commend his merchandising for charity.
Beck is good, well researched, and he has a pair. He’s a book hawker too usually with the formulaic line “As I mention in my book!” almost always followed by something like Obama as Spiderman with an impressive makeshift flo chart. I guess if that’s the market I’ll take a flawed, but informed Beck over the Game Show Host O’Reilly.
If Beck had a prime-time spot, he would crush the rest of Fox evening programming in ratings. I think they should have him trade slots with either the 6:00, 7:00, or 10:00 spots. O’reilly (8pm) and Hannity (9pm) need to have their self-esteem preserved.
I’ve noticed that Beck’s mix of news / commentary is getting much better in quality – more professional. I suspect this will eventually result in higher viewer numbers resulting in Fox looking at reworking their schedule. Beck Should be moved to 8 PM, and push Orielly and Hannity back to 9 and 10 and move Greta to the 5 PM slot. That would maximize their shows.
–
Hanity could do better if he tonned down the constant opinionating and repeating points that he does – gets old after a while, he would do better to be a little more balanced with some news reporting.