That’s what MSNBC’s problem is. I can’t watch them because they spend more time making fun of FOX than bringing actual news to the viewers. It’s begun to seem more like some sort of creepy immature adult team rivalry!

I do like CNN during the day, but I can’t stomach MSNBC anymore.

FOX does bring up a lot of relevant issues that usually send me to my computer to search out more information just to see if they are giving truthful information. Usually turns out that they are. I also like the fact that they make a point of dissing conservatives as well as liberals – where MSNBC will totally villify a conservative for being an ass but agree with a liberal who acts like an ass. Too hypocritical for me. Apparently they have never read the Journalists’ Oath.

Can’t stand O’Reilly – don’t know why his ratings are so high. Maybe parents use his program to scare their kids – “Look kids! That’s a creepy guy! Stay away from creepy guys!”… LOL!

Ratings are helped by objective (which can be seen as “quality”) reporting as well as reporting that is consistent with the viewer’s political beliefs. However, ratings are **really** helped by subjective reporting that is consistent with the viewer’s political belief. Because it’s easier to be subjective than objective and politically biased than politically neutral, news programs are becoming less objective (worsening in quality), more subjective and more politically biased.

In the end, this isn’t too bad for people who are biased towards one or the other political spectrum — what they lose in objective reporting, they gain in politically consistent subjective reporting. For more moderates, they lose objective reporting and have media outlets that are also progressively more inconsistent with their political beliefs.

I think Fox’s increasing share is associated with more viewers leaning conservative but less as a measure of Fox’s objectivity. It may, however, reflect what I see as the rapid increase in opinion-based, subjective reporting (and worsening quality) in the liberal media outlets which shores up the viewership from the liberal base, but causes the balance of moderates to flow more towards the conservative side. This can also explain why MSNBC is capturing a greater portion of the (shrinking) liberal news media share — because they have committed to opinion-based, politically-biased reporting — away from outlets like CNN, which have been less aggressive or effective in adopting the new business model.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/bloggers-run-world-thanks-confirmation

You liberals better wake up because this is Nazi Germany you have created at the voting booth, and it ain’t Bush that you have to kick around anymore.

MSM and this hideous Administration: News Flash from the people:: We are awake now and on to your games. Thank you for helping Obama, personally lifting this empty suit into the white house, become the laughing stock of the world, and sadly the rest of the world is also laughing at our foolishness, our hero worship for some Chicago thug with his thug buddies besmirching the highest office of the land.
Open your eyes all of you.
These people, and the main stream media, they do not care about you, this is all about power

Unfortunately all we have are numbers that show the liberal Obama luvin cable news going down, and “conservative” cable news ratings going up.

It may still be early in Obama’s administration, but the country has turned on him, and unless he gets things going it is going to be a long 4 years for him and us.

I agree — I even stated in my second post that the trends such a movement towards viewing more conservative news broadcasts, and I think that bringing in additional information regarding the Rasmussen reports helps to solidify the argument that this trend results from a conservative shift.

Where I was disagreeing was the use of this information and only this information to make comments such as: “this proves that X–.” Your inclusion of supplemental data is laudable and appropriate to make such an argument.

Additionally, I would still be interested in a more rigorous understanding as to causality. Several arguments have been posited here: a shifting towards conservatism, increased skepticism towards certain media outlets (I’m not here to argue the relative veracity of either outlets), and general execution of the programs. All of these may be true or partly true or only some of these (or it may be something else).

Since this is a ratings site, my interest is more geared towards what trends we are seeing in conservative/liberal broadcasts and why. This is related to the general conservative/liberal tendencies of the population, but, as noted, there are several other factors that are involved as well. For example, many have cited the quality of the news broadcasts as an issue. Unless you posit that quality news casts are defined as conservative new casts (and that liberal news casts are of poor quality by definition), then it may be interesting to separate this out.

Unfortunately (for analysis), there are fewer conservative national broadcast stations than liberal ones and this makes it harder to tease out the relationship. Fox represents one form of conservative journalism, but certainly there can be (and are) others. Likewise, MSNBC and CNN do have very different personalities, even if they both belong to the liberal camp.

That said, I guess I’m in the smaller category of people who are interested in viewing habits as opposed to political affiliation in this thread (which is not to say that political affiliation isn’t an interesting topic). Certainly, a shift in politics is a substantial argument for this shift in viewership, but there are other pieces, as well as mediating explanations to investigate as well.

Why are you libs so obsessed by FOX? You basically control the print media and cable news networks… Conservatives have Fox and AM radio (for the most part) So what’s the big deal?? you can watch MSNBC and CNN…read just about any newspaper like the NYT and get your fill of liberal propaganda… the rest of us can get our news reported without all the Liberal, thrill up our leg, biased crap the other stations are doing. All 2 – 500K of you can be happy and the 3.5 Mil of us can be happy too. Why are you so obsessed with FOX?? just don’t watch it…in your norrow little mindset you will never understand why FOX is so successful… so why bother trying?

I suggest you look less at the data at a point in time, that is does MSNBC + CNN + HNN = FOX and more at the trends in the data. The trends don’t lie. One is going up, the others are going down.

Now tie this to polling data from rasmussenreports.com that shows a negative trend for the president (much worse than his predecessors) and a “generic” republican slate beating a “generic” democrat slate and I think one can draw a pretty clear conclusion.

Same here. I never watched or paid attention to anything political before this last election.

Then his job would be to keep those people honest and transparent. He would go back to more non-political or political satire. There should always be healthy debate and there should always be transparency in everything that the government does. We don’t have that transparency and that’s one of the reasons we have so much corruption.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that Fox didn’t have the plurality either — in fact, if, as you say, it gets more viewers than all other combined, it would have a majority.

My main contention is that the replies in this board seem to read to far into the data. The above doesn’t have direct share data, but if we believe that Fox is gaining market share, than it certainly suggests that there is an increasing popularity with the kind of news Fox is reporting. It is an “okay” inference to suggest this reflects a growing trend towards conservatism overall; however, much of the commentary on the board make it sound like 30% of Americans suddenly decided that conservatives are better than liberals.

Such a conclusion makes far too many assumptions than are warranted. While educated inference and speculation are definitely welcome it becomes questionable when these items are touted as truths. There are several reasons why the trend in ratings could over-reflect or under-reflect the actual growth in conservatism, including the items mentioned above (actual preference for conservatism, interest in controversial figures) as well as other items (a gradual realization of Fox as an alternative would suggest more conservatives than noted; higher sustained viewership in the non-majority party would suggest fewer).

Further viewership for news programs — as is with other television — is only mildly correlated with quality. It is possible that Fox is improving the quality of its new reporting (or the other outlets are getting worse), but there are other reasons why people choose to watch one program rather than the other. As suggested, people would prefer programs that align with their political beliefs, thus the increase could be a shift due to changing beliefs. People also prefer programs that are entertaining, thus the increase could be a shift due to more engaging reporting from Fox — where engagement can be a function of content as well as style.

In any event, I’ll stop there. People will read into the numbers what they will, and it’s liable to only confirm their opinion and have very little sway on others. I was just hoping to be a bit more “moderate” — if you will — with regards to what the numbers meant.

I also don’t know about this radical agenda because he isn’t getting anything done he just keeps making speeches while doing nothing. Obama is the least effective president since Jimmy Carter.

It does when Fox gets more viewers than all of the other networks combined. Also, if any of the other networks were simply neutral and balanced like they all claim they would get a freaking ton of viewers. People are just sick of the extreme liberally biased programming. Especially when all of these networks don’t report the news, like Acorn and Van Jones. Also the majority of the US believes the media helped get Obama elected and is pushing his agenda and you simple can not be fair and balanced if you are doing that.

I don’t know if they will be moderate or conservative in 2010. I personally hope that they will be conservative and that they will fight against all forms of corruption in both parties and in our government agencies.

The problem that conservatives have with republicans is they get elected and then they don’t do what they say their going to do. That’s the reason so many conservatives were pissed off with Bush. It’s also the exact same reason conservatives didn’t support McCain. It’s also the reason Beck said that McCain would have been a worse president for conservative/republicans. Obama through his radical agenda has scared the living daylight out of the conservative base. Many of which thought their votes didn’t matter in the last election. I hope that it will translate into real elected officials in 2010 who actually serve the people.

@Philosopher Jay
Well put. I didn’t know that 5pm was considered to be prime time.

Liberals/conservatives split the US roughly 50/50, with a good amount of swing either way (this is why presidential races are difficult to estimate). We also know, per this thread, that they have different viewing preferences w/regards to cable news. However, there _is_ only one major news outlet that swings relatively conservative whereas there are multiple news outlets that swing relatively liberal.

Thus, if we assume we have 100 people, 50 liberals and 50 conservatives, all 50 conservatives will watch Fox; while, say 25 of the liberals watch MSNBC and 25 watch CNN. This gives Fox the plurality of viewership, but doesn’t make any grand statement about the plurality of media political preference.

Saying nothing on Beck isn’t exactly running away but it is best because if you attack him you lose the primary if you support him you lose the general.

But what I’d like to know is do you think that there will be more moderates or more conservatives elected in 2010.

As far as candidates go, no candidates should be quoting any talk show host. That doesn’t make any sense, I’ve never heard even really conservative candidates quote Beck or Limbaugh or Hannity. Why the heck would they?

Also, we have a lot of moderate republicans in office right now, so which ones are running away from Beck right now? Cause I haven’t heard any, that was one of Joe’s complaints. If none of them are running from Beck now, why would they when he becomes even more popular closer to the election?

Only Darwinists reject evolution: http://tiny.cc/9GRMF

As far as 2010 I don’t think I will be surprised I expect the republicans to pick up between 20 and 30 seats, more wouldn’t surprise me, in the house and maybe 5 senate seats. The thing that may be surprising is just how many moderate republicans will be in those seats. I think most of the new republicans in congress in 2010 will be moderates who run away from Beck.

Now if you see any republicans that are not from hardcore conservative states or districts quoting Beck in campaign adds and win then I will be surprised.

I guess we’ll see in 2010. I think you’ll be surprised. I know so many freaking families that have never cared worth crap about politics that are getting involved. As far as Joe goes, Joe’s ratings aren’t that great and that’s probably for a reason. As far as Joe telling the truth, when he takes video clips of beck cut doctored and out of context and tries to show it as “truth”, it’s total bull and everybody knows it. The reason Beck’s ratings are huge is because he’s connecting with the core conservative base, not that everything he says is 100% accurate, but right now every conservative describes Beck as “on fire”. Hopefully his “refounders” group of congressmen, which is now up to 5, will make a huge dent in the corruption in DC.

yes, bush was bad and made bad decisions…WE GET IT…GET OVER IT.

and maddows defense of ACORN is beyond words…i hope joy behar stomps all over her ratings…and i hate behar.

And Glenn Beck is not a conservative he is just a good actor that knows how to make money.