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Five Reasons Why Fox News Dominated Ratings In 2009 by Steve Krakauer | 12:34 pm, December 18th, 2009 What we’ve known since about March is about to come true – Fox News is headed for its best ratings of all time this year. As their competitors in cable news fall far behind, FNC looks toward the rest of the cable universe as its new competition – it finished in the top five on all of cable in prime time and total day. What was the reason for FNC’s success? Heres’ five reasons. 1: Glenn Beck: Beck’s enormous success during his...

Fox News will finish 2009 as the top-rated cable news network, a perch it has enjoyed for eight years running. But 2009--the first year of the Obama administration--also marks FNC's highest rated year in the channel's 13-year-history. FNC topped the competition in all dayparts: morning (1 million total viewers, 340,000 viewers in news' target demographic of 25-54-year-olds); total day (1.2 million viewers, 323,000 in the demo); primetime (2.2 million viewers, 551,000 in the demo). Those numbers mark year-to-year demo gains of 14% in the morning, 16% in total day and 10% in primetime (Mon-Sun), according to Nielsen. FNC saw double-digit...

Glenn Beck argues for a federal Value Added Tax. O'Reilly wants a federal sales tax.

It's time for the truth – straight up, whether you like it or not. Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck are teaming up and going on tour. Your town may never be the same. Westbury, NY Saturday, Jan 23, 8PM The Theatre at Westbury (877) 598-8694 Buy tickets online Tampa, FL Friday, January 29, 8 PM USF Sun Dome (800) 745-3000 Buy tickets online N. Charleston, SC Saturday, January 30, 1 PM North Charleston Coliseum (800) 745-3000 Buy tickets online Norfolk, VA Saturday, January 30, 8 PM Ted Constant Convocation Center (757) 683-4444 Buy tickets online There's no shortage of people...

In another sign of detente between Fox and the White House, Major Garrett has landed an interview with President Obama, according to the Drudge Report. It will take place next week in China. -snip- UPDATE: A White House official tells POLITICO that the report is "not accurate." "We've not committed to doing any presidential interviews during the trip to Asia with any outlets at this point," the official said.

Highlighting even further the ratings erosion at CNN in prime time, the “Most Trusted Name in News” finished in fourth place among cable news outlets during election coverage last night. Fox News was #1 by a mile, followed by MSNBC, then CNN sister network HLN and CNN in 4th place. They were fourth in both total viewers and the A25-54 demographic. CNN’s 4th place finish last night was only made more glaring because last year’s election coverage on the network was their best night of all time. They didn’t just have more viewers than every other cable news network last...

In White House Vs. Fox News War Of Words, Who Gets Your It seems like time for a survey: I'm supporting: The White House on this one; Fox News isn't "fair and balanced." Fox News on this one; it asks questions others don't and the White House should be able to handle them. Neither side. They're both trying to play this "feud" to their advantage. Vote? Go to the link provided. Vote your choice and let NPR know your pick.

This is the entire Glenn Beck show from Monday, November 2nd, 2009. In this episode entitled “Should Economists Build an Ark”, Beck discusses the NY-23 congressional race, progressives in both parties, ACORN, SEIU, NJ absentee voter fraud, ObamaCare, MediCare, MediCaid, and the silence from lawyers. He interviews Jonh Fund and Kevin Williamson. Video: Glenn Beck on November 2nd, 2009

Democratic pundit Bob Beckel has been under contract with Fox News for six years. And in the midst of the White House war against the cable network, some of his liberal friends think that’s six years too many. They invited him to lunch the other day for an intervention: Why is Beckel — a true-blue Democrat who worked for Robert F. Kennedy and ran Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign — giving comfort to the enemy? Beckel’s response: “I talk to more persuadable voters in a month than anybody on MSNBC and CNN talks to in a year.” In the eyes...

Cavuto nailed Grayson yesterday during Neil's "common sense: segment...here's the clip in case you missed it.. http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?maven_referralObject=11076607&maven_referralPlaylistId=&sRevUrl=http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,570150,00.html

Administration slams what it calls a "misleading" Associated Press story alleging the government significantly overstated the number of jobs created or saved under Obama's $787B stimulus program The Obama administration on Thursday slammed a report from The Associated Press alleging the government had overstated by thousands the number of jobs it has created or saved with federal contracts under President Obama's $787 billion recovery program. The White House seized on an initial report from a government oversight board weeks ago that claimed federal contracts awarded to businesses under the recovery plan already had helped pay for more than 30,000 jobs....

Orly coming up...

It’s a nine-percent bump in the two weeks since Anita Dunn’s whine heard ’round the world — in terms of overall audience. Among the coveted 25-54 demographic? A 14-percent bump. Good work, Barry. People keep telling me that this PR offensive by the White House benefits both sides but I don’t see how that’s true. If the goal is to contain Fox by framing the stories it breaks — Van Jones, ACORN, etc — as somehow illegitimate, then every tenth of a point that Fox’s ratings go up undermines that goal. There will come a point where other news nets...

Before Glenn Beck started his new show on Fox News in January, he sat down with Roger Ailes, the network's chief executive, to make sure they were on the same page. "I wanted to meet with Roger and tell him, 'You may not want to put me on the air. I believe we are in dire trouble, and I will never shut up,' " said the conservative radio host. But before Beck could say anything, Ailes shared a message of his own: The country faced tough times, he said, and Fox News was one of the only news outlets willing...

The Sunday talk shows featured a number of pundits who agreed that the White House war on Fox News had failed. This past week, while the Obama administration delayed decisions on real threats around the globe, Fox News was declared to not be a news channel by Anita Dunn, Robert Gibbs, Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, and Barack Obama. This video composite features comments on these statements by Nico Pitney, Jane Hall, Amanda Carpenter, George Will, Laura Ingraham, and Cynthia Tucker. Video: Sunday Talk Show Pundits Defend Fox News

Jane Hall: "I'm also frankly uncomfortable with Beck who I think should be called out as somebody whose language is way over the top and scary."

A great week for Glenn Beck show and FNC. Not so great for the Obama attack machine and democrats. Clip 1 : Glenn Beck Clips 10-23-09 Seg1- GREAT! Running America the Chicago Way, Mafia & Baseball Bats Welcome to the Glenn Beck program. Tonight here are the question we are going to talk about : Chicago type lessons and are they being applied ? And who is going to whacked, and why ?.... It's the Chicago way. If you don't know what that is let me play you a scene from the movie ‘The Untouchables.’ (Plays clip of Sean Connery...

By launching coordinated, fully-blown warfare on Fox News, as is their style, the Obama administration is stopping far beneath the dignity of the office of president. The recent round of attacks became particularly intense as White House communications staff, senior advisors, and even the president himself each took their turns at lobbing potshots at the top cable news station. This conflict began brewing during the presidential campaign with Obama cracking jokes and complaining about Fox News, continued through the early months of his presidency, and then increased their momentum to reach the unprecedented crescendo of the recent bombardments. The first...

<p>Rahm Emanuel once sent a dead fish to a live pollster. Now he's put a horse's head in Roger Ailes' bed.</p> <p>Not very subtle. And not very smart. Ailes doesn't scare easily.</p> <p>The White House has declared war on Fox News. White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Fox is "opinion journalism masquerading as news." Patting rival networks on the head for their authenticity (read: docility), senior adviser David Axelrod declared Fox "not really a news station." And Chief of Staff Emanuel told (warned?) the other networks not to "be led \[by\] and following Fox."</p>

The White House's feud with Fox News has caused an irresistible buzz in Washington, but many are wondering precisely what prompted President Obama and his advisers to go ballistic against the network. Here's the answer: Team Obama was pushed over the brink by a growing list of what it considered outrageous anti-Obama conduct by Fox that showed no sign of stopping. Obama's advisers say that they seethed while Fox commentators used their shows to encourage protests against Obama's healthcare proposals last summer. Team Obama fumed as Fox personalities tried to pressure some controversial Obama advisers to resign. White House officials...

One of the lessons most people carry away from the schoolyard is that picking an avoidable quarrel with somebody who really likes to fight generally is a losing proposition. It's too bad nobody reminded the Obama administration of that before it launched into its ill-advised campaign against Fox News. First of all, even though the White House is right on the merits when it describes Fox News as operating mainly as a surrogate for the Republican Party, making an issue of that fact is a tactical mistake. Fox News' core audience is a cadre of true believers whose regard for...

A White House effort to undermine conservative critics is generating a backlash on Capitol Hill — and not just from Republicans. “It’s a mistake,” said Rep. Jason Altmire, a moderate Democrat from western Pennsylvania. “I think it’s beneath the White House to get into a tit for tat with news organizations.” Altmire was talking about the Obama administration’s efforts to undercut Fox News. But he said his remarks applied just the same to White House efforts to marginalize the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a powerful business lobby targeted for its opposition to climate change legislation. “There’s no reason to gratuitously...

Is this a joke? "Speaking privately at the White House on Monday with a group of columnists and commentators, including Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Bob Herbert of The New York Times, President Obama himself gave vent to sentiments about the network, according to people briefed on the conversation…"

Escalation: White House Tries to Exclude Fox From Press Pool Interview The White House sent out an alert today to the press pool that "Pay Czar" Kenneth Feinberg would be doing a press availability— a round robin with the major news networks, in which Fox is customarily concluded. The administration specified that everyone was invited except Fox News, according to Bret Baier on "Special Report" tonight. The press pool, acting in the interest of its members, admirably stood up to the White House bullying. All the other networks declared that if Fox was not getting an interview, they would not...

Decide for yourself what the most disgraceful aspect of this is. Was it the fact that Gibbs told Jake Tapper explicitly on Monday that the White House wouldn’t try to dictate to the press pool who should and shouldn’t be included — before doing precisely that? Was it Anita Dunn going out of her way to say she respects Major Garrett as a fair reporter — before the administration decided he didn’t deserve a crack here at Feinberg? Or was it the repeated insistence by Dunn and Axelrod that of course the administration will make its officials available to Fox...

Just when you thought the White House couldn't possibly do anything to make their bizarre feud with the Fox News Channel an even larger spectacle - the administration manages to take it to another level. Over the past two weeks, three White House officials have publicly criticized the Fox News Channel by denigrating its status as a news outlet - White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, Senior Advisor David Axelrod and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. And even the president himself commented on his opinion of Fox News. However, that pales in comparison to the latest petty stunt. On the...

A day after key White House officials declared the Fox News Channel wasn't a news organization, President Obama met with MSNBC personalities Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. Talk about your delicious hypocrisy. Fittingly, the news was broken by FNC's Bret Baier during Tuesday's "Special Report" (video embedded below the fold with transcript, relevant section at 1:45, h/t Hot Air via NBer Thomas Stewart): BRET BAIER, HOST: And finally, during this morning's off-camera White House briefing with reporters, ABC's Jake Tapper asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the ongoing White House attacks on FOX News Channel. After being asked about the...

Yesterday, Fox News reported the hearings held by Senator Joe Lieberman with cabinet officials concerning a shortage of flu vaccine. I'm sitting in Afghanistan not getting much broadcast TV news. I wanted to find out more, so I searched Google News for related articles. It turns out that as of this writing, the rest of the media is not reporting this event, at least in print. Try this. Go to the Google search page, click on the "News" tab. Now enter "Joe Lieberman".

Fox News is "operating basically as talk radio," President Obama suggested in an interview airing today. After weeks of public feuding between the cable news channel and the president's top aides, Obama seemed to agree with statements by his advisers that Fox is not a real "news station." "I think what our advisers have simply said is that we are going to take media as it comes," Obama told NBC's Savannah Guthrie. "And if media is operating basically as a talk radio format then that's one thing, and if it's operating as a news outlet that's another but it's not...

You'd think the leader of the free world would have more important things to worry about. We are, after all, in the midst of a recession, two wars and a swine flu epidemic. Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. Russia is rebuffing our overtures to cooperate in imposing sanctions on Iran. The situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating amid a fraud-marred election and White House indecision about a troop surge. Meanwhile, the dollar's value is falling; Americans are struggling to hold on to their homes and jobs and Congress is flirting with a health care reform proposal that...

Do the major media outlets in the U.S. have a liberal bias? Few questions evoke stronger opinions, and we cannot think of a more important question to which objective statistical techniques can lend their service. So far, the debate has largely been one of anecdotes (“How can CBS News be balanced when it calls Steve Forbes’ tax plan ‘wacky’?”) and untested theories (“if the news industry is a competitive market, then how can media outlets be systematically biased?”). Few studies provide an objective measure of the slant of news, and none has provided a way to link such a measure...

25-54 demographic: Beck 681 O'Reilly 583....Total Viewers: Beck 2620 O'Reilly 2490

The White House escalated its offensive against Fox News on Sunday by urging other news organizations to stop "following Fox" and instead join the administration's attempt to marginalize the channel. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN that President Obama does not want "the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox." Obama senior adviser David Axelrod went further by calling on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox is "not a news organization." "Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way," Axelrod counseled ABC's...

David Axelrod, then Barack Obama’s chief campaign strategist, put it best when he told his boss: “You care far too much what is written and said about you.” That was in 2006 but, three years on, some things don’t change. Obama is President of the United States. His party controls both houses of Congress. And, yes, he just won the Nobel Peace Prize. But Obama still can’t shake off his fixation with the chief voice of the opposition – Fox News. It was the White House’s Anita Dunn who was wheeled out to declare that Fox was “a wing of...

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch said on Friday that White House criticism of commentators on his Fox News television channel had served to "tremendously" increase their ratings. "There were some strong remarks coming out of the White House about one or two of the commentators on Fox News," Murdoch told the annual meeting of News Corp. shareholders here. "And all I can tell you is that it's tremendously increased their ratings," he said. Murdoch's remarks came after White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told The New York Times earlier this week that Fox News was "undertaking a war against Barack...

Who’s behind the White House war on Fox News? By Michelle Malkin  •  October 14, 2009 05:06 AM President Obama with Anita Dunn, David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, and Robert Gibbs (via White House Flickr stream) My syndicated column today follows up on yesterday’s Fox News Derangement Syndrome post. Who has Obama stocked his communications shop with, you ask? Beltway flacks for corruptocrats. Meet some of the key people behind the White House war on Fox News. Birds of a feather…****Who’s behind the White House war on Fox News? by Michelle MakinCreators SyndicateCopyright 2009 White House interim communications director Anita Dunn assumed the...

Terry Keenan has left Fox News Channel "on her own terms," reports Johnny Dollar. Keenan hosted the weekend program "Cashin' In" and was senior business correspondent for FNC and FBN. Keenan joined FOX in 2002 from the now-shuttered CNNfn where she'd been since 1998. Before that Keenan spent three years at CNBC. Keenan got in to the TV business joining CNN in 1986.

Fox News seems to enjoy being on the White House's enemies list. A festering enmity between the Obama administration and the cable network boiled over Sunday when The New York Times quoted White House communications director Anita Dunn as saying of Fox: “We’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent.” Fox Senior Vice President for News Michael Clemente fired back at what he called the White House’s “attack mentality.” “Perhaps the energy would be better spent on the critical issues we are worried about,” Clemente said in a statement the network issued. If Fox’s ratings are...

At a time of tension between their organizations, White House senior adviser David Axelrod met with Fox News chairman and chief executive officer Roger Ailes two weeks ago, sources tell POLITICO. The two met privately in Manhattan during the president’s visit to the United Nations. The two discussed news coverage and the relationship between the organizations. Ailes is the founder of Fox News. A key part of Axelrod’s portfolio is the president’s image and broad message. POLITICO has asked Fox for comment, and will update with reaction. White House officials have expressed pique with what they consider heavy coverage of...

Fox News’ 3amET comedy/news hybrid Red Eye is in a league of its own when it comes to cable news shows. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a player in the ratings. Despite its late (or early, depending on your sleep habits) start time, the ratings for the show continue to improve, and surprisingly, top some cable news competition you might not expect. Last week we were forwarded this message board post on ActivityPit.com – Red Eye’s online community that feeds its dedicated base of fans. Here’s a part: The ratings came out for September and Red Eye is up...

Was up wearly today, and caught the 6 AM EDT re-run of the BOR show. When it first started, I admit I was dissappointed to find that Juan Williams was subbing for BOR, so I just kept the show on, while at the PC, figuring I'd change the channel when the impetus of being bored would provide the impetus to c hange the channel... But as the show progressed, i found that Juan Williams was hosting like I've never hearf him host before. He was engaging, even handed and wouldn't let the guests get away with filibustering either the Left...

The ill will between the White House and Glenn Beck is no secret. The popular Fox News host has said he believes President Obama of having "a deep-seated hatred of white people" and mounted relentless on-air campaigns against two administration officials. After he took Van Jones, the "green jobs czar," and Yosi Sergant, the communications director at the National Endowment of Arts, to task for what Beck said was inappropriate political work, both men quickly resigned. But the Obama-Beck battle could become a full-scale war as Beck trains his sights on White House confidante Valerie Jarrett and the White House...

Ladies and gentlemen, your President is a robot. Or a wax sculpture. Maybe a cardboard cutout. All I know is no human being has a photo smile this amazingly consistent. On Wednesday, the Obamas hosted a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, during which they stood for 130 photographs with visiting foreign dignitaries in town for the UN meeting. The President has exactly the same smile in every single shot. See for yourself — the pictures are up on the State Department’s flickr. And, of course, compressed above into 20 seconds for your viewing pleasure.

When I announced last week that I was leaving ABC for Fox, some readers complained about my "bias." I replied: "Every reporter has political beliefs. The difference is that I am upfront about mine." Look at today's burning issue: President Obama's pledge to redesign 15 percent of the economy. Virtually every reporter calls his health care plan "reform." But dictionaries define reform as "improvement." So before they present any evidence, reporters pronounce Obama's plan an improvement. Isn't that bias? The New York Times took its bias to an absurd length. Its page-one story on the big anti-big-government rally in Washington,...

Here is video of a pathetic attempt by liberal Obama Ally "Think Progress," to "ambush" The O'Reilly Factor's Jesse Watters - who frequently "ambushes" people in the field. They were trying to get back at Watters for an "ambush" he did of liberal Amanda Terkel earlier this year (see below) . . . (VIDEOS)

Chris Wallace labels 0bama Administration "The biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoNMvubV87M

Cable news ratings, September 14, 2009: Check out the highlights, and see the full ratings below: • Fox News topped all its cable news competitors – CNN, HLN and MSNBC – in prime time last night, in total viewers and the A25-54 demographic. The top program was Bill O’Reilly’s 8pmET FNC hour in both categories. • The #1 non-FNC show was MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann in total viewer’s and Nancy Grace’s HLN show in the demo. • The #2 show on cable news was Glenn Beck’s 5pmET hour in total viewers and Sean Hannity at 9pmET in the demo.

The August ratings are out, and once again, the ratings for the Fox News Channel are phenomenal. Rather than throwing a million pieces of data that every channel is spinning into madness, I ask you to consider just this one: On Sunday night, the third episode of AMC's highly-publicized and much-discussed series, "Mad Men," drew an audience of 1.6 million viewers at 10 p.m. when it debuted. Throughout the month of August, Fox News Channel averaged an audience of 2.29 million viewers during every single hour of prime time. And some nights, Bill O'Reilly drew an audience twice as large...

POLITICO's top story this morning is on the midnight resignation of embattled environmental adviser Van Jones, whose radical political views and past affiliation with a 9/11 conspiracy group put pressure on the White House in recent weeks. Much of the credit for Jones resigning should go to Fox's Glenn Beck, who as HuffPo's Ryan Grim notes, has his "first scalp." Beck repeatedly called attention to Jones's past comments and affiliations without mentioning that he was also the co-founder of ColorOfChange, the African-American activist group leading a boycott against the Fox host. Even before the boycott, Beck mentioned Jones twice on...