At least that seems to be the message that has been sent by recent viewership totals of the four major cable news stations -- CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, and HLN (formerly known as Headline News) -- during prime time.
CNN, which is by far the one that relies on actual news coverage (as opposed to talking heads and one-way opinion shows) to drive its audience numbers, came in dead last for the month of October for prime-time programming, reports the New York Times.
However, CNN still has the highest viewership numbers when you look at all the hours in the day, but when it comes to prime-time, the most important hours of the day in terms of advertising revenue, it looks like the American public has a much stronger taste for opinion. FoxNews has made a living on those types of programs (led by the "Papa Bear" himself, Bill O'Reilly, who grabs an average of 880,000 viewers a night), so it should be little surprise that Fox dominates almost every time slot of the prime time schedule.
Opposite 'O Reilly at 8 p.m. is MSNBC's Keith Olberman (the #1 pundit on my list of pundits I'd like to personally strangle) who pulls in less than 300,000 viewers a night, followed by HLN's Nancy Grace with roughly 270,00. In the same time slot, CNN's Campbell Brown gets only 162,000 viewers.
The story is pretty much the same at 7 p.m., with Fox's Shepard Smith grabbing the top spot with 465,000 viewers, while MSNBC's Chris Matthews (179,000), HLN's Jane Velez Mitchell (166,000), and CNN's Lou Dobbs (162,000) barely manage to get that many viewers combined.
The only CNN host not to finish in last place during prime time is the ancient one, Larry King, who managed to finish third at 9 p.m. with 224,00 viewers. That's still well behind Fox's Sean Hannity (659,000) and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow (242,000), but ahead of HLN's Joy Behar (181,000).
Maybe the saddest part for CNN is that their signature show, Anderson Cooper 360, also went to the bottom of the barrel in October. Cooper (who got 211,000 viewers) was beaten by RE-RUNS of Olberman (223,000) and Grace (222,000) during the 10 o'clock hour. Fox's Greta Van Sustern won with 538,000 viewers.
Sadder still - in three of the four time slots, CNN programs were beaten by HLN programs....and HLN is actually owned by CNN. Basically, that's like USA network getting better prime time ratings than NBC.
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Showing posts with label CNN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CNN. Show all posts
Monday, October 26, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Eight Years Later, Part II
I was actually thinking about this earlier today, and apparently I wasn't the only one. What would 9/11 have been like if it happened today. It's only been eight years, but the technological advances, at least as far as social media goes, have been pretty amazing. What if Facebook, Twitter, and iPhones had been around back then?
Alexia Tsotsis offers a few possibilities. Although his ideas are not as detailed or imaginative as they could have been, he does at least try to answer the question.
"This realtime 24-7 Internet did not exist in 2001. We had the earliest versions of social media, instant messaging and blogs. But we had nowhere near the household use of many-to-many communication channels like Twitter and text messages. For the most part we spent 9-11 watching CNN. The Web in '09 is more about doing rather than watching. Twitter asks, "What are you doing RIGHT NOW?""
When I was thinking about this earlier today, it struck me how totally different the day would be remembered if we had all these social media tools back then. Of course the events would be the same, but the record of the day would be much more personal, and probably more horrific.
On the more positive side, there would have been less confusion, at least at first, about what had happened.
On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, CNN ran a minute-by-minute replay of their coverage of that morning. What I was struck by was the complete confusion about what had happened to the first tower. Until they actually saw the second plane impact the South Tower, the officials seemed to have no idea what happened to the North Tower. Despite having plenty of people in the street saying a plane had hit the building, they seemed completely unwilling to believe that story. If it had been today, the anchors would have just sat in the newsroom and read aloud the various postings online that reported what had happened.
In many ways, I think 9/11 is responsible for the way news coverage of major events has changed. Even without the impact of social media, personal accounts and video recordings were the major sources for journalists, many of whom couldn't get as close to the action as the people who were living through it. Obviously, the most compelling footage came from in and around Ground Zero, so the news networks picked up on that model, and, voila, you have the roots of today's heavy influence of "citizen journalism" in cable news.
Alexia Tsotsis offers a few possibilities. Although his ideas are not as detailed or imaginative as they could have been, he does at least try to answer the question.
"This realtime 24-7 Internet did not exist in 2001. We had the earliest versions of social media, instant messaging and blogs. But we had nowhere near the household use of many-to-many communication channels like Twitter and text messages. For the most part we spent 9-11 watching CNN. The Web in '09 is more about doing rather than watching. Twitter asks, "What are you doing RIGHT NOW?""
When I was thinking about this earlier today, it struck me how totally different the day would be remembered if we had all these social media tools back then. Of course the events would be the same, but the record of the day would be much more personal, and probably more horrific.
On the more positive side, there would have been less confusion, at least at first, about what had happened.
On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, CNN ran a minute-by-minute replay of their coverage of that morning. What I was struck by was the complete confusion about what had happened to the first tower. Until they actually saw the second plane impact the South Tower, the officials seemed to have no idea what happened to the North Tower. Despite having plenty of people in the street saying a plane had hit the building, they seemed completely unwilling to believe that story. If it had been today, the anchors would have just sat in the newsroom and read aloud the various postings online that reported what had happened.
In many ways, I think 9/11 is responsible for the way news coverage of major events has changed. Even without the impact of social media, personal accounts and video recordings were the major sources for journalists, many of whom couldn't get as close to the action as the people who were living through it. Obviously, the most compelling footage came from in and around Ground Zero, so the news networks picked up on that model, and, voila, you have the roots of today's heavy influence of "citizen journalism" in cable news.
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