With Fox ruling ratings roost, CNN looks ahead
Filed under: Media
What's the No. 1 brand in cable news? That depends, in part, on how many screens you're counting.With the second-quarter drawing to a close, Fox News Channel is running up the score on the competition, posting its highest ratings ever and boasting of an evening audience equal to those of CNN, MSNBC and Headline News combined.
But that's only looking at TV. And that's something CNN -- which had its best second quarter since 2003 in total viewers, but fell to third place in primetime in the crucial 25-to-54 demographic -- says it's not doing anymore now that so much news is being consumed on computers and mobile devices.
"We used to be a television business," says Jack Wakshlag, head of research for Turner Broadcasting. "We see our future in terms of being a multi-platform media company. Now we need a metric that will measure our power or our presence across the different platforms."
As it happens, Nielsen, the ratings firm, recently started tracking such a metric. It's called Nielsen Fusion, and it combines viewership and online usage data. The Fusion rankings for April show CNN with a commanding lead over both MSNBC and Fox News when it comes to reach among all viewers. (That's looking at the full day, not just primetime.) CNN (which is part of the same media conglomerate as Daily Finance parent AOL) reached 125.3 million people in April, versus 105.5 milllion for MSNBC and 104.3 million for Fox.
That's not really a surprise. CNN has always beaten Fox and MSNBC in reach, or cumulative audience. (Fox and MSNBC counter that advertisers make their buys based on ratings, not cumulative reach, which doesn't reflect duration of viewership.) And CNN and MSNBC both have a big head start on Fox when it comes to web traffic; the Fox News Digital Network attracts fewer than half the unique visitors of the MSNBC or CNN digital networks (No. 1 and 3 among all news sites, respectively).
But as viewers increasingly migrate their news consumption from televisions to other types of screens, total cross-platform viewership is only going to get more important, says Wakshlag. He notes that 20 million viewers get news from both CNN television and a CNN website in the same month, versus only 9 million who do the same with Fox. "For some reason, they don't have a lot of what we're calling 'integrators,' and we're seeing that as something that really says something about the strength of the brand," he says.
Fox, of course, views CNN's emphasis on a newfangled measurement as a mark of its failure to secure the old-fashioned ratings advertisers care about. "Apparently the sheer embarrassment of getting beat by both Headline News and MSNBC along with the continued implosion of Campbell Brown and Anderson Cooper has led CNN to its latest act of desperation," says a Fox News spokesman. "We wish Jack well in continuing to defend their battle for fourth place."
I've offered my thoughts on how Fox's dominance seems to continue irrespective of political or social trends. Michael Wolff has some further ideas on the subject: He thinks the ratings surge Fox has experienced over the last few months proves that viewers are coming to it for entertainment, not politics.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-26-2009 @ 5:47PM
Jerit said...
The whole article was left wing thinking and jealousy.
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6-26-2009 @ 8:53PM
Michael said...
I know for a right wing nut like you, facts hurt.
"The Fusion rankings for April show CNN with a commanding lead over both MSNBC and Fox News when it comes to reach among all viewers. (That's looking at the full day, not just primetime.)"
Fox is good comedy though.
6-26-2009 @ 8:53PM
yvonne said...
Jealousy? Why would anyone be jealous/ You right wingers always say its the left,when you don't like something,Everyone knows Fox is a network for the deliverance people,Oh better yet more like "Hills Have Eyes" people .Racists,,skinheads,Klan,and most of all Dummies!
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7-31-2009 @ 2:59PM
Stacey said...
Who's the biggot, Yvonne? What do all those peeps you mentioned have in common? They stereo-type and they are haters. Just like you. Not all Republicans are the same. At least FOX news channel brings in articulate pople on BOTH sides of the issue. They clearly favor the right at FNC, but at least it is transparent with their discussions and arguments with the "other" side. UNLIKE CNN which presents a bias and calls in un-biased news.
6-28-2009 @ 11:54AM
scooter said...
I think fox wins in tv ratings and fails miserably on the net for the same reason Rush Rocks the AM radio, and slowly is succeeding in FM. They're becoming obsolete technologies, that older, more conservative people listen to or watch.
That's a nice way of saying that Fox and Rush are actually in a bad spot.... They just don't know it yet
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6-28-2009 @ 11:55AM
Marshall Wade said...
The consistently high ratings for Fox News suggests two basic theories: Fox's base audience is overwhelmingly conservative, and because of the popular impression among conservatives that the "mainstream media" has a "liberal bias", they are more than likely to watch Fox News almost exclusively. The more liberal TV audience, on the other hand, is divided up by at least five different choices for their TV news sources: the "mainstream media's" three major broadcast networks, plus CNN and MSNBC. The second theory makes two points: A good percentage of those liberal viewers probably also regularly tune into Fox News just to see how they're going to spin the news that day (thus now spreading liberal viewership over at least six different sources), Lastly, more liberals than conservatives are likely to rely exclusively on newspapers and/or the internet for their major source of news rather than television.
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6-28-2009 @ 11:55AM
AL said...
Oh....so when your losing now it's a cumulative effect now.LOL....hahaha
So the fact that conservatives dominate talk radio is b/c what......
now b/c fox dominates it's b/c what......oh only conservatives watch it.Not that libs constantly lose debates to conservatives.
Maddow,shultz,shuster and olberman....cannot win a debate against a conservative for thier life.Even liberals don't want to hear the love fest for obama 24-7.The tingling up their legs is getting too tingly.
Cnn is just hporrible programming...brown,king and cooper are boring druids.I'd rather watch paint dry.Take a side or get run over by both sides for playing in the median.
6-28-2009 @ 11:55AM
njguy said...
The difference is the age of the information seeker, wasn't there a ratings released some time ago saying O'reily's audience was over 70 years old. Fox's audience can't use a computer or blackberry. Problem solved.
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6-28-2009 @ 11:55AM
leatherhelmet said...
I surley don't have to stick up for FOX, they fight their own battles and do a real good job of it but,.....this article is so misleading its' comical. FOX reaches a bigger audience than CNN, they win the game! It doesn't matter if FOX has an entire audience of 82 year old Conservatives, that go to church every sunday, drive a Hummer, fly Old Glory on the front and back of the house, are pro life, put their hand over their heart at every playing of "TheStar Spangled Banner", shower 7 days a week,etc, it's always what comes out on the bottom line and....the bottom line says FOX has more viewers than CNN, period. Lefties are spin doctors and so are columnists that write this kind of stuff, Mike.
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6-29-2009 @ 11:05AM
tantamnt said...
Nice spin Leatherhelmut but the numbers say that in overall exposure CNN wins! Read the numbers!
And Fox is only one of 6 in the poll and if it's Fox against the world they are trounced by the other 5 combined.
6-28-2009 @ 11:56AM
rannan3 said...
This is akin to the President saying he has " saved or created " all those new jobs nobody's seeing.
Now the media spins it's way into belieing the facts -- Fox News is more popular than the other news outlets.
and no, we don't watch to be entertained, we watch because you can trust the coverage to be fair.
and as you can see, we can and do use computers. But hey, if it makes you feel better to decry Fox's appeal, go right ahead. ( just remember , numbers don't lie, only people do )
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6-29-2009 @ 11:05AM
David said...
Nice try, but the spin is thin. Again numbers don't lie.
Read and think about what the article says, Fox is one of 6 major news outlets in this market that have Television exposure as part of their mix. And many of us tune in to laugh at Blowhard Bill and his crew of clowns who can't get the details (facts) correct on a regular basis.
Oh! And I don't own a TV! I watch everything on the internet, usually a podcast free of advertising. So I guess they only count me and many others with this kind of poll. And the poor TV advertisers don't get their bonus miles!
6-29-2009 @ 11:05AM
bnurse said...
"Fair?" the only thing Fox and Fair have to do with each other is they start with the same letter.
6-29-2009 @ 11:05AM
TheATLMac said...
Gotta love it. CNN can't come close to competing with Fox News, so instead of trying to improve their coverage, CNN simply invents a new metric. If you can't beat em, cheat then lie about it. Why should we expect anything different from a sold out, liberal propoganda outlet like CNN?
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6-29-2009 @ 2:34PM
el pinche said...
Fox turns up the ratings with more bimbo boobage, psycho talk, and has every floor TV at Walmart tuned to FoxNews.
What do you expect when 23% of the country is watching the only rightwing media outlet?
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6-30-2009 @ 8:42AM
One True Patriot said...
It's pretty pathetic when someone has to identify their politics with a news channel. Is rooting for your news channel like rooting for your favorite baseball team then? Simply pathetic.
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