When Glenn Beck took over Fox's 5pm weekday timeslot, Fox's 5pm average viewership was approximately equal to its 3 main cable news competitors combined (CNN, HLN, MSNBC). He quickly opened a gap of about 500,000 average viewers, but in August his viewership began to grow rapidly and his lead over the combined competition is now approaching 1.5 million average viewers (a factor of nearly 2x).
This interesting chart was another collaboration between two of our readers. Reader Dave created the chart using the data patiently assembled by reader MikeS.
Glenn Beck vs. The Combined Competition TV Ratings Since He Moved To Fox News:
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.
Call the President racist and your ratings go up. Great. Good going America.
Fear and smear does wonders for tv news ratings.
GLENN CALLS IT AS HE SEE’S IT. IF JUST SO HAPPENS HE SPEAKS WHAT MANY, MANY OF US KNOW.
Watching Glenn is like watching the Watergate investigation – he keeps asking questions (like those questions many viewers have been asking for a long time) and then waits for the answers – he researches and researches and tells you how and where he researched. He explains only FACTS and he supports his facts with his research.
He questions with Boldness! Knowing that the truth will set you free.
If all the other net works did this then their ratings would go up too!
During the primaries I kept asking myself where Woodward and Bernstein were? Glenn is the only one so far that is looking not for “propaganda” but just answers and the truth. I for one never knew that Tides wrote the Stimulus bill. But there was Harry Reid thanking Tides for the bill. But who is Tides?…. just watch Glenn and he will connect the truth with facts.
Well i hate Beck but sometime i watch just to see what crazy stuff he does. Probably i’m not the only one. Let’s not forget Jon and Kate got 10 millions, people love watching stupid things
I’ve been watch Glenn Beck for a while now. I haven’t seen him do anything “crazy”. What did he use to do that I missed before I started watching his program? What made him go into serious straight-forward questioning and reporting? Why did he stop being crazy? Was it no longer fun? Gee, I’m sorry I missed his zany days.
yeah baby the republic is making a comeback we are taking our country back!!!!!!!
P.S. the only time I’ve ever seen Beck is on Youtube with regards to the ACORN vids. So don’t even try to go there. I don’t waste my time with the MSMs for the most part, Fox is the closest to “fair and balanced” but -none- of them do a satisfactory job.
Beck is not a journalist and you people are f***** clueless to actually compare him to Woodward and Bernstien.
I really enjoy the people who follow Glenn Beck more then Beck himself. Average people think Beck is nuts but the nuts who watch Beck think they are the average people so no matter what you say against Beck they come back at you with things like “he is the only one telling the truth.”
Beck is the modern day pied piper and how he gets people to follow him is genius. I think he is one of the smartest people on TV, he is an amazing actor because people who watch him don’t think he’s acting. And now he is getting rich, just wait till Fox moves him into prime time, he will start beating O’Reilly.
Beck not a journalist??? Thank God! That means we can trust what he says!
We all know how this Howard Beale story ends.
Sandra Martin…. greatest.comment.ever
It would be nice to have numbers for the 5 PM time period before Beck appeared.
Beck apparently started off promising not to be partisan. (http://mediamatters.org/research/200903050029)
Apparently, this approach only lasted for three weeks, and his corporate masters were not satisfied with the ratings.
On February 6th, he starting calling the Obama administration both socialist and fascist. (http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200902060027)
This right-left, left-right attack was a standard fascist trick of the Nazis: they accused the Jews of being both capitalists and communists at the same time, thus gathering both anti-capitalist and anti-communist haters behind the Fuerher. It was quite successful and their vote count went from 800,000 in 1928 to 17 million votes in 1933.
After doing these fascistic ad hominum attacks, Beck seems to have been consistently getting about 500,000 more viewers than other cable news stations from the middle of February to the end of July.
It was only on July 28th that Beck called Obama a racist. This gave him a massive amount of publicity. He was in every newspaper and on just about every television and radio news show for about a week. This seems to have added another 500,000 viewers.
He was on the cover of Time Magazine on Sept. 17 and interviewed by Katie Coric. This appears to have added about 300,000 additional viewers.
So we can distribute the increase this way:
Use of old left-right/right-left Nazi tactics: 500,000 viewers gained.
White Supremacist name calling: 500,000 viewers gained.
Cover of Time Magazine Publicity: 300,000 viewers gained.
That’s wonderful logic Martin, use that through out history and I guess we would never know much of anything about this country.
Hehe, I knew this site was coveted by old, white America. At first I just thought it was coincidence that a ton of the comments for the late night shows smacked of ‘old’ but now, seeing that there are actually people who see Beck positively, I can conclude that it’s no coincidence at all.
At least it’s comforting to know that the ‘average’ American is the lazies person in the whole world, so no matter what insane idea Beck may convince his lunatic audience to agree with it won’t actually amount to anything. Teabaggers? What have you done yet? You realize that the rest of America, and the world, are laughing at you, right? You see – it’s hard to convince people who are infinitely more highly educated than you to do what you want them to do by shouting racism and ignorance.
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keep calling Beck crazy… meanwhile everything he touches yields results,, ACORN, NEA Van Jones.. notice the left just calls him crazy and never defends his arguments….. because they can’t. The truth cant be denied. Only diluted. This is why they use things like ” “politically correct and hate speech or the fairness doctorine” if you cant argue on the facts, just silence the other side ….
Beck only appeals to uneducated and primitive – amazing they can even find their way to the internet *g*
Glenn Beck is awful. He’s a mascot for nutcases who just want to shut their ears, close their eyes, and be fed “the truth” by someone with zero credentials and a shady drug-filled past. Yeah, way to go.
I LOVE Glenn Beck’s show.
He has a good team and always an interesting collection of topics, and very intelligent visitors on his show.
If you do not like Beck, do not say anything nasty, just don’t watch his show.
People who bash him are the same that think GW Bush was a dope and love Keith O, and listen to Al Gore and Michael Moore and believe what they have to say. After Bush won the election, the left got together and their main motivation and goal was to trash Bush and tear him down. Well, it looked like jr high school to me on the television cable stations. esp msnbc. Absolutely silly.