my azz.

Nah, I tend to stick with those like you who solely defend FNC & FBN that might work for the corporation. Btw, you can rip CNN all ya want and even talk about KO till ya turn blue. But ya should know, I don’t watch KO and could care less about him.

Now, where have I heard that line before? Oh right, out of MY mouth!

Haile — You exclusively defend FNC & FBN every chance ya get. So, save the “funny” and admit you work for the corporation!

I’d be first to point out that Fox generally gives Republicans a little more time, to cover stories the rest of the media fail to, but in this case I can account for the disparity.

It’s a 3 man race on the Republican side, and there’s a deep contrast between each candidate, which means there’s a lot more to report on. You’ve got a moderate troublemaker often at odds with the base, you’ve got an establishment conservative buying himself the election, and you’ve got a no-name class-warfare conservative with shocking popularity. In contrast, Clinton and Obama agree on almost every issue, so much so that they’re reduced to making their distinction who was first to attack the Iraq war. Once you’ve told that story a thousand times, it gets old.

But I saw Fox cutting away from McCain’s speech, and gave Obama a very disproportionate amount of time when he spoke. Then the panel lavished praises on him, and showed clips of a woman crying behind him, and commented on how touching it is to see, and how the Republicans have no candidate with half of his ability to inspire people. I thought they were very fair last night, and their coverage was entertaining.

I’ve noticed you always make intelligent commentary, ira, but I really don’t buy that Fox’s coverage had anything to do with CNN and MSNBC’s unusual numbers last night. There’s a pattern of this happening whenever non-regular viewers channel-surf for news.

I thought Fox spent far too much time with the Republican contests, especially early in the evening and it may have cost them in the ratings from 9pm to conclusion. If memory serves correct, when Obama was called the winner in Missouri, a graphic was placed on the screen but it didn’t warrant a verbal call or a discussion.

From a strictly news viewpoint, that Obama is virtually running even with Hillary is a more compelling news story that what has become a shambles of the Republican race.

And to give MSNBC some credit, its best coverage is probably during these rare times, if only because it’s a time for counting down the numbers, not counting down the “worst people in the world”.

Yeah I kinda figured they used the 360 bug so they could count the primary election coverage as part of 360’s monthly ratings — interesting tactic I guess. Maybe Fox, if they have the time, can put out one of their pretty bar graphs showing us the “true” 10pm ratings LOL
Comment by Anonymous — January 30, 2008 @ 4:41 pm

Regardless, I’m really surprised to see that MSNBC and Fox were SO close in the demo! At 9pm, MSNBC flat out beat Fox…when has that happened before? I liked CNN’s coverage the best though — some feel the data they present on the “wall” is excessive, but many of us don’t need the relatively slow pace that Fox uses with presenting the data. Frankly, the more graphs, the better!

The reason is simple: Brand awareness. Holding a cable news monopoly for 20 years buys you this advantage, as do all the positive articles about CNN (and conversely negative about FNC) from a predominantly liberal print media. When viewers stay tuned for longer periods, they gravitate heavily toward Fox.

I’ve seen CNN try to use these rare times when their ratings spike to claim that more people watch CNN than do Fox, which couldn’t be more dishonest. They’ve gone as far as labelling State of the Union Address (or another somesuch event) as “Anderson Cooper 360″ just to claim 360 has better ratings than Fox. They conveniently leave out the fact the show was nothing more than the State of the Union Address.

I always think, if any cable network is willing to distort it’s ratings to mislead the public, it’s willing to distort the news to mislead the public.