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Posted on 04/15/2003 12:40:01 AM PDT by Future Useless Eater
Viewers Flee ABC News and CBS News
Did CBS really think it would benefit from letting Dan Rather be a useful idiot for Saddam Hussein? Does ABC really think Americans want to watch its foreign, blatantly anti-American anchorman Peter Jennings? Too bad for them that the people are voting with their feet, their wallets and their remote controls.
In an astonishing break from the past, viewership of these networks' evening news shows has actually declined during this wartime. Only NBC, which has a cable operation and has long been the least offensive of the former "Big Three" networks, registered a (small) increase in the newly released Nielsen ratings.
"The overall decline in the evening news programs' ratings, coming at the same time as the three cable news networks achieved gains of more than 300 percent, could be a watershed moment in how Americans get their news on television," the New York Times noted today.
"Going back the 15 years that I have researched it, the networks always show an increase of about 10 percent in viewing during heavy news periods," said Andrew Tyndall, founder of Tyndall Report, which monitors network newscasts. "This would be an unprecedented event."
Too bad that the broadcast networks won't listen to Bernard Goldberg. Speaking to a NewsMax forum last week, he revealed why the networks are losing their audience and what they could do to stop the hemorrhaging.
But ABC continues to prove Goldberg's assertion that the nets are in denial. Its execs "dismissed the shrinking numbers as insignificant, if not completely irrelevant," the Times reported.
CBS, however, is finally starting to panic. After all, since the groveling Rather let himself be exploited as a mouthpiece by genocidal madman Saddam, viewership of "CBS Evening News" has plunged more than 15 percent. Even more embarrassingly, Fox News Channel's excellent morning program, "Fox & Friends," has beat CBS's "The Early Show" despite being available in 20 million fewer homes!
The red-faced suits at the long-ago Tiffany Network are blaming ... the Bush administration. They whine that the policy of placing reporters with the military units in Iraq has boosted the cable channels.
"This was a reporters' war, not an anchor war; this involved a series of very profound individual vignettes," complained Andrew Heyward, the president of CBS News, who still fails to understand how much middle America despises Rather.
Fox Topples ABC
By the way, it's not just the networks' news divisions that are hurting. One of the most underreported developments from last week was the Boston Globe's article on how the Fox broadcast channel has overtaken woeful ABC in the entertainment ratings.
No doubt the overpaid and soon-to-be-jobless big cheeses at ABC have a lame excuse for that too.
ABC still fourth in ratings
By David Bauder, Associated Press, 4/9/2003
NEW YORK - Fox's resurgence over the past few months means ABC is frequently the fourth-place network, and its weakness was evident again last week.
Only two ABC programs - ''Primetime Thursday'' and ''The Bachelor'' - were among the week's 40 most-watched prime-time programs last week, according to Nielsen Media Research.
By contrast, NBC had 16 shows in the top 40, CBS 15, and Fox seven, Nielsen said.
ABC has been the fourth-place network for six of the previous eight weeks. It avoided that fate during the weeks of two special events - the Academy Awards and Martin Bashir's interview with Michael Jackson.
More importantly for ABC, it also placed a distant fourth last week among viewers age 18 to 49, the advertiser-friendly demographic that ABC, NBC, and Fox most aggressively chase...
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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This is mind boggling. What a slap in the face to John Roberts, eh? It's as if he wasn't even there.
Maybe CBS can merge with Salon.
As heard on the Imus Show, (paraphrase) "All you need to know that when Rather interviewed Bush Sr. he picked a fight with him and when he interviewed Saddam he let him have a pass".
Oh, gee, aren't we picking on definitions here. Reporters can be as much as anchors and vice versa. Anchor is only a repeater, what value is there in this middle man who can only be original in how he or she distorts the truth.
yep, it was a war for the truth, not for the lies.
In primetime programming, ABC has once again embarked on a mindless sitcom strategy as evidenced by prematurely axing two promising dramas in "Veritas: The Quest" and "Miracles," while giving Daniel Stern yet another shot at flopping in a sitcom.
Truer words...
My nominee for Quote of the Week!
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