October 29, 2009--Fox, CNN, MSNBC, Obama, and "The Daily Show"

All the media were atwitter last week when the TV ratings for October were announced and CNN was found to be languishing in fourth place. (See New York Times front-page article linked below.)

I asked Rona, “Fourth place? I thought there were only three cable news channels—CNN, MSNBC, and of course Fox.” Separately Fox had been very much in the news because of the open warfare that had broken out between it and the White House. Even Mr. Cool, President Obama had been slamming them in public, denying that they were in the news business and comparing them to rabidly partisanly Talk Radio. But what was the fourth network?

“Headline News, silly,” Rona reminded me. “Their primetime line up that includes the equally-rabid Nancy Grace finished ahead of CNN and wound up in third place. I bet that especially will make the stodgy CNN folks crazy. Pretty soon it will be up for sale and I’ll bet Rupert Murdock will try to buy it.”

Ever the skeptic I checked the numbers and sure enough with the exception of “The Larry King Show,” which finished third in the ratings race, all other 7-11 PM CNN shows came in last—from Campbell Brown (no surprise) through, big surprise, Anderson Cooper.

Here are some of the actually numbers about viewership. Read them and weep:

Campbell Brown—162,000
Anderson Cooper—211,000
Larry King Live—224,000

Hardball With Chris Matthews—179,000
The Rachel Maddow Show—242,000
Countdown With Keith Olbermann—295,000

Shepherd Smith—465,000
Sean Hannity—659,000
Bill O’Reilly—881,000

As a sidebar, immigrant-basher Lou Dobbs, who should and probably will wind up on Fox, draws just 62,000; and Teabagger Glenn Beck’s show, which airs on Fox at 5 PM, before the primetime hours, has between 500,000 and 600,000 daily viewers.

All tolled, a few hundred thousand viewers per show is a lot, but are these numbers either large or significant enough to make the front page of the Times much less get the White House pants all in a bunch?

I do remember photos of LBJ, isolated in the Oval Office, watching three TVs simultaneously while the country ignited around him to protest the Vietnam War. He was tuned in to the news on the then three existing networks—NBC, CBS, and ABC—at a time when at 6:00 o’clock in the evening everyone, and I mean everyone in America, was watching Walter Cronkite and his anchorman colleagues. That’s when the news was the news. But now? Whose watching? And who should care?

If you want to know where on TV people are actually getting their “news” (and the quotes I feel are appropriate), they are tuned in in much greater numbers to “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.”

In October, Colbert drew 1.2 million viewers each night while Jon Stewart had 1.6 million. About twice O’Reilly’s total.

If Obama and his minions want to keep an eye on things, I suggest they pay attention to what these guys are saying about them since I am sensing a shift toward real criticism.

And while I’m making suggestions, rather than taking on Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, it would be a better use of time to take on members of Obama’s own party who are about to filibuster his healthcare reform legislation to death. All in a move to protect their own individual changes for reelection—Evan Bayh, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Kent Conrad, and, how-could-I-forget, Joe Lieberman.

To get Joe on board Obama will have to agree to bomb, or have Israel bomb Iran before the vote.