Friday, April 17, 2009

Mainstream Media Collapsing Rapidly

The network news in the Mainstream Media is drowning in a fetid pool of its own bile and bias. Speaking about Katie Couric's "ambush interview" of Sarah Palin, Don Imus called Couric "the little rodent." Well, as the graph below shows (with the yellow line), the little rodent is becoming more and more miniscule. Couric is paid a huge salary as a newsreader for attracting fewer and fewer people, and the same is true of her counterparts at ABC and NBC.


Why on earth would any American with an ounce of sense watch the network evening news? Edgar R. Murrow and Huntley/Brinkley are long gone, and they've been replaced by mental midgets with nasty dispositions and contempt for their own viewers. (See the Newsbusters analysis below.)

"Just When You Think the Big 3 Evening Newscasts Can't Sink Any Lower, They Do"

By Tom Blumer (in Newsbusters.com)

April 14, 2009

I could of course be commenting on the poor quality of the alleged journalism. But in this case I'm talking about their ratings, which is of course largely caused by said poor journalism.

Three weeks ago (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted that the Big 3 networks' evening newscasts' combined ratings had dropped about 17% since the collective high they achieved during the week of January 26, the first full week after Barack Obama's inauguration.

Make that 21%. In the 25-54 demographic, the drop has been 30%.

And it's not just a seasonality thing. The collective drop compared to last year is over 4%, continuing a long-term decline the nets surely hoped they might prevent if they could just get their guy elected to the White House. No dice, guys.

Here [above] is an updated week-by-week graph for each network since the first of the year, followed by some demographic and overall info (based on info found at the Evening News Ratings Category at Media Bistro's TV Newser):

Do you think any of them are wondering if they maybe, just maybe, should have started paying attention to that Tea Party thing a bit earlier than, say, tomorrow morning?




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