jason_els
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Hmmm....
No where do they mention their cumulative rankings. What you're talking about are share rankings. They're two different things. In TV, what matters, because it determines your advertising rates, is the cumulative rankings. Share represents how many people you pull out of the pool of people who watch at any given point. Cumulative (or cume) represents how many people you get to sit and watch your channel for 6 minutes or more during an entire month. The problem with share is that it only ranks those people who will watch cable news and that number is dropping for every network. If you pull 20% of 1,000,000 people and 25% of 100,000 people the next month, you can cry long and loudly that your share rankings are up in a big way even if you're reaching far fewer people overall.
It doesn't surprise me that Fox got high rankings for June because they, above all other networks, covered the death of Michael Jackson to the exclusion of nearly everything else.
Fox may have the most share, but in truth, the top cable news channel in terms of cume, is (and has always been) The Weather Channel. Now if we discount TWC, and it's fair to do so as they only produce one particular kind of generally non-editorial news, CNN still has the highest cumulative ranking unless something different has happened of late.
If we look at Nielson Fusion scores, which include unique website hits along with viewership, then CNN still beats MSNBC and Fox, which has fewer than half the unique hits CNN has. Fox has claimed that its media buyers (advertisers) don't buy based upon cume. That may be the case given that Fox pulls in a particularly singular viewer demographic that the other networks do not, however cume rankings have always stood as the gold ring that networks seek to capture.
Fox share rankings will naturally be high because they serve one particular demographic which is neglected by the other major cable news networks. And that's only cable news. Even CBS's third-place running CBS Evening News with Katie Couric has double the viewer of Fox's most popular show.
All cable news networks, however, pale in comparison to WWE, Burn Notice, Hannah Montana, NASCAR, Sponge Bob Squarepants and a host of other basic cable shows each of which has, on average, at least double the number of viewers that cable news does.
Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity may be popular, but not nearly so much as The Undertaker, Jeff Gordon, or Sponge Bob. That should tell you something about the demographics of who relies on cable news these days.
It must be noted that Fox News believes Nielsen is fraudulent in its rating system. Per Bill O'Reilly:
No where do they mention their cumulative rankings. What you're talking about are share rankings. They're two different things. In TV, what matters, because it determines your advertising rates, is the cumulative rankings. Share represents how many people you pull out of the pool of people who watch at any given point. Cumulative (or cume) represents how many people you get to sit and watch your channel for 6 minutes or more during an entire month. The problem with share is that it only ranks those people who will watch cable news and that number is dropping for every network. If you pull 20% of 1,000,000 people and 25% of 100,000 people the next month, you can cry long and loudly that your share rankings are up in a big way even if you're reaching far fewer people overall.
It doesn't surprise me that Fox got high rankings for June because they, above all other networks, covered the death of Michael Jackson to the exclusion of nearly everything else.
Fox may have the most share, but in truth, the top cable news channel in terms of cume, is (and has always been) The Weather Channel. Now if we discount TWC, and it's fair to do so as they only produce one particular kind of generally non-editorial news, CNN still has the highest cumulative ranking unless something different has happened of late.
If we look at Nielson Fusion scores, which include unique website hits along with viewership, then CNN still beats MSNBC and Fox, which has fewer than half the unique hits CNN has. Fox has claimed that its media buyers (advertisers) don't buy based upon cume. That may be the case given that Fox pulls in a particularly singular viewer demographic that the other networks do not, however cume rankings have always stood as the gold ring that networks seek to capture.
Fox share rankings will naturally be high because they serve one particular demographic which is neglected by the other major cable news networks. And that's only cable news. Even CBS's third-place running CBS Evening News with Katie Couric has double the viewer of Fox's most popular show.
All cable news networks, however, pale in comparison to WWE, Burn Notice, Hannah Montana, NASCAR, Sponge Bob Squarepants and a host of other basic cable shows each of which has, on average, at least double the number of viewers that cable news does.
Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity may be popular, but not nearly so much as The Undertaker, Jeff Gordon, or Sponge Bob. That should tell you something about the demographics of who relies on cable news these days.
It must be noted that Fox News believes Nielsen is fraudulent in its rating system. Per Bill O'Reilly:
Sources: Project for Excellence in Journalism, Nielson Media, Media Bistro, Zap2It, Fox News.While FOX News continues to rule, there are major problems with the Nielsen ratings system. There have been wild swings in the ratings that have benefited MSNBC. We've asked for an explanation of those wild swings. Nielsen can't explain them and those swings are unprecedented in the television business.
An examination of Nielsen shows that their personnel is overwhelmingly liberal. Twenty-six Nielsen executives, including CEO Susan Whiting, have donated to the Democrats. Two to the Republicans.
The bottom line on this is there may be some big-time cheating going on in the ratings system, and we hope the feds will investigate. Any fraud in the television rating system affects all Americans.
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