You are an angry, frustrated liberal. That's why I watched you for a while- I got a lot of laughs. But… then it ocurred to me that you are under the delusion that you are fair and balanced. I didn't want to encourage you by raising your ratings so I tuned out. Maybe I'll watch again if you make John Edwards the WORST PERSON of the day. Come on… I double dare you!

I am pretty much guaranteeing that this is the reason for the 40% drop. No one drops 40% instantly unless they say something REALLLLY insensitive, except Olbermann is not dumb enough to do that. Im sure everyone though “oh Olympics ads, that must mean broadcast news is over till the Olympics are done. I think I will either not watch it or just watch NBC.”

To do the analysis you’re asking for would be a bit of work on my part, and I’m really not interested enough in the subject to do the analysis. : ) We have numbers for KO in one fashion or another going back to last fall, you’re welcome to comb through them all…

http://tvbythenumbers.com/category/ratings/top-news/oreillyvsolbermann

Yes Chris, I noticed that. He went with the anthrax story starting last friday when everyone else was screaming about the “race card” controversy. I think Olbermann sees himself as above that kind of stuff and may have been a bit stubborn in going with the anthrax story and then to justify it beat in the conspiracy theory a bit too much. It’s actually one of the things that I like about Olbermann — he’s willing to do something as his lead story that isn’t what all the talking heads scream about.

This is the reason I see the missing girl stories hurting Olbermann more than O’Reilly. Olbermann doesn’t really want to go there, whereas, the few times I’ve watched O’Reilly he seems more than willing to go there. So, when a big sensational story is going on, and Nancy Grace is queen of that stuff, I would expect it to hurt Olbermann more than O’Reilly while helping Nancy Grace. I can’t remember the last missing girl story focused on Olbermann.

Today’s sensational story was the revelation of Edwards’ affair (which really made my stomach sick), Olbermann could not NOT do that story and lead with it. I don’t know when RS will post today’s numbers, but I’d like to see if the fact that the sensational story today was of political import helped Olbermann regain some of his audience.

Are these ratings the lowest KO has had in recent months? Has he dipped this far down and recovered in the past? Was the recovery quick or did it take a longer term to complete a rebound? What I am trying to find out, I suppose, is whether he hits lulls routinely only to recover quickly, or if this is the start of a very bad trend from which there may be no recovery? What was the last time his daily ratings were below 700,000?

Well, I wouldn’t assume that its any one thing. It could just be a confluence of events.

Great sensational stories of missing little girls that fit perfectly with Nancy Grace’s show taking some from Olbermann, Brett Farve story taking a bit more, a few careless people like me who don’t check the program guide, making dumb assumptions about programming now that the Olympics started, and maybe others who don’t want to hear the anthrax conspiracy theory story — even very solid liberals don’t want to hear conspiracy theories.

Oh, what the heck. Let’s go with a conspiracy theory: The Bush administration ordered Nielsen to lie about Olbermann’s numbers because he’s on their trail with the Anthrax story

It’s not unthinkable to me that the Brett Favre story (and thank goodness our long national nightmare is now over!) took some of the viewers, but it’s not like KO completely tanked when ESPN was running NBA playoffs or for that matter, NFL games on Monday nights — down, yes, tanked no. You may be right about the soccer. It’s so easy to use your cable, sat, DVR or Internet program guide these days to see a “what’s on” grid that I just assume people actually do that to see what’s on. Probably not a safe assumption.

What I am saying about the soccer thing is that I am a KO fan, followed him from SportsCenter to MSNBC, so I am a devout watcher, yet, I missed Olbermann on Wednesday because I thought that MSNBC had switched to Olympic soccer coverage. I am also a soccer fan but their soccer coverage was god awful, and I couldn’t stand it. I turned MSNBC off for the rest of the day thinking Olbermann wouldn’t be on. I wonder if there were other people like me who assumed wrongly that Olbermann wouldn’t be coming on because of Olympic soccer coverage because, like me, they assumed it would be an all day thing?

That said, I do think the recent sensational stories are more up Nancy Grace’s alley than Olbermann’s alley, so she benefits from his general refusal to do that sort of story.

I also wonder if others like me who follow Olbermann because we loved him on SportsCenter, may have been bigger sports fans than Olbermann fans and with the hoopla about Brett Farve may have decided to tune into ESPN for that coverage instead? How are ESPN numbers over the last couple of days?

I don’t know. I am just guessing here. I am completely flabbergasted. How do you lose half your audience in one day? I mean 1.3 million on Tuesday, and then 600,000 the next two days?

I am looking at your chart here :http://tvbythenumbers.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/072308oreillyolbermann-500×400.gif

And it looks like the long term trend had been right around a million viewers a day for a few months now. Although if I am reading it correctly, he’s dropped off to somewhere around 700,000 or so a few times recently but bounced back as well. Could this be a temporary thing?

Also, I don’t normally follow the day to day ratings wars but I got curious because I’ve heard a lot more people talk about what KO said about this or that issue, and found your site, which had the most complete and recent data of all the sites I saw about this.

How can you compare pinheads and patriots,debate between libs and conservs,dennis miller,the beautiful megyn kelly(love her) and lis wiehl segment when they go at it.reality check is a riot,the viewer mail….His constant attack on pedophile scum,his tough questions,his investigative reporting on these weak judges and fake politicians.

Remember oreilly told you Edwards was a phony before any one else.I wonder if edwards will be the worst person in the world?

If olberman is a true newsman and not a hack sportscaster,and not biased edwards should be the worst person in the world .we’ll see,nothings worse than cheating on your wife while she’s dying of cancer!!

The man’s whole show is bush is dumb and a war criminal,billo this,sean hannity that and let’s not forget mccain bashing 101.

that’s the man’s whole show….who wants to watch that everynite…i personally tivo his show just to see what dumb crap he’ll say about oreilly..i am a oreilly lover.

The last straw for me was saying that although oreilly beat him in the total viewers, 25-54 ,25-43,25-36 and he beat oreilly in the 19-36 range that his show kicked oreillys butt…and his staff starts laughing and cheering…..so someone beats you 4 out of 5 categories…yet your the winner?

lmao…that’s when i had to stop watching this nut.Also if you watch countdown,read the huffington post first b/c everything he uses comes str8 from there!

I agree w/you about Nancy Grace, the little girl missing will attract viewers. Also that the lawsuit against Nancy Grace was allowed to go forward can’t be bad for her ratings either.

I can’t really speculate on the other things although your contention that earlier programs were way down leading into Countdown doesn’t really work for me. A week ago Thursday Hardball had 443,000 viewers, last night it had 389,000. That’s down 12% but we see the ratings numbers for all of these shows vacillate at that level all the time. KO is down from 1.097 million a week ago to 643,000. That’s down 41%. We don’t usually see that kind of vacillation without special circumstances. Not really seeing it here. Your speculation on Nancy Grace and being turned off by anthrax conspiracy theorists makes much more sense to me than the soccer thing. I doubt soccer in the AM would have much if any bearing on the 8pm hours ratings (again, 7pm hour only down 12% week over week).

It’s a good sensational story and Olbermann really hasn’t covered that story. Also there’s that Clark Rockerfeller mystery story and Olbermann really hasn’t talked about that much either. If Nancy Grace is covering that, that could be hurting Olbermann as well.

The idea that Olbermann’s viewers were really O’Reilly viewers who just got curious and then left when they got bored of it begs the question, where did they go now that they aren’t watching Olbermann, because O’Reilly’s numbers don’t seem to have soared as a result.

I also wonder if waking up to Olympic soccer on Wednesday didn’t mislead some people into changing the channel. When I woke up on Wednesday and saw women’s soccer on MSNBC, I turned the channel and never turned back. I didn’t feel like watching women’s soccer all day. It wasn’t until later that I realized the soccer coverage wasn’t all day.

Don’t get me wrong, I like soccer, but I don’t watch MSNBC for soccer.

Another theory I have is that Olbermann has had Greg Posner on his show for a few days postulating a conspiracy theory on the anthrax case. Could that have turned viewers off?