“How ironic is it that the ONLY bureau THEY think worth keeping is INSIDE THE BELTWAY.”
Actually it’s not ironic, it’s a sign of the times. After all, ALL the IMPORTANT news is from Washington these days anyhow right? And we certainly don’t need “fact checkers” since anything coming from the 0 regime is by definition blessed truth...right?
ABCCBSCNNNBC is in a lot of trouble really, for obvious reasons. #1 being that very few people think they have anything to do with “objectivity”.
Probably not. Yes, it makes us feel better saying it, but the problems are more demographic-related than "news quality" related.
Young people - people generally under the age of 35, don't watch news. They didn't stop watching because of objectivity, or the lack thereof, but because of technology. They consume their news much differently than previous generations. That's why the average age of the network news viewer (and network television generally speaking) is well into the 50s.
Even still, NBC makes money hand-over-fist with the NBC Nightly News broadcast as well as the Today Show which remains a cash-cow for the network. They make money because they have a cable division that helps offset operational costs. ABC and CBS don't.
Also, while FNC does enjoy MUCH better ratings, they only marginally enjoy better ad revenues than MSNBC and CNN, and it was only recently that they surpassed MSNBC and CNN on ad revenues. Why? Because FNC skews older than both MSNBC and CNN and advertisers will pay a premium for a specific kind of demographic, and that's not FNC's primary demographic.
FNC does make MUCH more money than CNN and MSNBC (with only marginally better revenues), it's primarily because FNC doesn't have the infrastructure that both CNN and MSNBC enjoy. FNC operates at a fraction of the cost of both their competitors. So, they get to keep much more of the revenue they generate. Simple accounting.