Fox Ascendant!

Fox News is kicking a** and taking names, according to the NY Times:

Fox News clobbered the other cable news networks, its 8.1 million viewers more than tripling its own election night prime-time performance in 2000. NBC, ABC and CBS, on the other hand, lost millions of viewers this year, according to Nielsen Media Research. And Fox News actually came closer to CBS in the ratings than CNN did to Fox News.

They are big-timin' it, all right.  The story sort of fails to mention it, but if you look at the cool graphic, you will see that Fox TV and Fox Cable combined for roughly 13 million viewers on election night.

For comparison, CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN combined for about 44 million viewers.

Oh, but it is Fox bias that has mind control over the population, so that makes all the difference.

Comments

[Crank]

What I think you mean is that Fox is more influential because it has more credibility ;)

Frankly, I thought Fox had a decisive advantage from having Michael Barone, what with the fact that Barone knows everything.

[Charlie on the Pennsylvania Turnpike]

And don't forget that during the debates, FNC beat CNN & MSNBC.... combined.

[SomeCallMeTim]

"Oh, but it is Fox bias that has mind control over the population, so that makes all the difference."

Given the study that indicated that Fox viewers were spectacularly uninformed as compared to the general public (and maybe it's denuded as inaccurate; I don't know, but I'd take your word for it if you say so), I think it's the fact that Fox doesn't need mind control that worries Democrats (like myself) so much.

[TM]

Re: Republican ignorance: I don't have the Fox study specifically in my sights, but I am working on something similar.
(Talk is cheap - ed.)

[perfectsense]

Must...watch...Fox...and...obey.

[Cecil Turner]

Resistance is futile.

[Jor]

Well we all know the Iraq/Al Queda and Iraq WMD #'s. I'm sure Fox are proud of how many republicans know basic facts. But putting that aside for a moment, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News aren't news -- they are infotainment. Fox just doesn't pretend they are news, hence they provide much better entertainment value. It's unfortunate people think of any of them as news channels, but what can you do. Who doen't like O'Reilly yelling at them about fallafels?

[Sando]

Laurie Dhue, Kiran Chetry, Jane Skinner...It's called Fox for a reason.

[Toby Petzold]

I enjoy all of the cable news channels because I'm a news/analysis junkie and because I'm a visually-oriented person who likes to see the latest footage of whatever and because each has something interesting at different times of day. But my news consumption from the Big Three is down to almost nothing.

The Leftists get all worked up about the evils of FNC, but that's because they're dumbasses. What is Fox guilty of that CNN isn't?

It's never the ideology that bothers me; it's the pretense to objectivity that drives me insane.

Speaking of being driven insane, the hottest babe on FNC is Alisyn Camerota, but it may also be Rebecca Gomez. The important thing to remember is that it's probably Patti Ann Brown.

[Charlie on the Pennsylvania Turnpike]

==Fox just doesn't pretend they are news,==

True, true. Alleged 'news' is nothing compared to the giants, right? Giants like:

*CBS News and their premiere anchor Dan Rather (even tho I used bogus documents, he should still address the allegations)
*the New York Times' unabasehed nonpartisanship (heh, this one make me laugh out loud)
*NBC & ABC News who refrained from calling OH and other states after being called by members of Team Kerry (so said Newsweek without the slightest hint of shame).

What critics of FNC can't get over: they show BOTH sides of a story, compared to the majority of media that shows one side, so of course it appears 'biased' since it conflicts with the others.

Also, lets not forget Jamie Colby or Dari Alexander ....

[Jor]

Charlie, are you really serious about the NYT? Do you guys really believe the shit you say? The NYT spear-headed the propoganda campaign that got us into the War. They attacked Clinton harder than they've hit Bush. Please, please, try and think for just one minute.

[The Sanity Inspector]

I watched ABC the night of the election. (Listened, actually; I was in the other room at my computer, in the chatroom that The Commissar so kindly provided.) They did indeed refrain from calling Ohio, but I got the impression that this was not due to political bias. Rather, they were gun-shy. Jennings and Stephanopoulos must have been bombarded with emails, because they get insisting they weren't going to call any close state until the race there was nailed shut. And they did actually wait til the polls closed in the Florida panhandle before calling it for Bush, this time.