Cable News Ratings: Let’s talk numbers
There are a great deal of pundits, pundits masquerading as journalists, partisans masquerading as journalists and downright open partisans blabbering about the invalidity of Fox News and of their popularity. So, let’s look at the claims that (1) Fox News is not the #1 cable news channel and (2) that the other cable news channels (“PMS”NBC and the Clinton News Network) are just as successful.
Here are the numbers according to a variety of sources: (links follow the data to prove its not my imagination creating these numbers)
TVnewser (non-partisan)
Numbers for Monday October 26, 2009
Total viewers (thousands) day: FNC: 1522 | CNN: 486 | MSNBC: 435 | HLN: 377
That’s right Fox News had 1,522,000 viewers Monday while it’s closest competitor of the day, CNN, had less than one third the viewership at 486,000. No competition there.
How about these numbers from the left-wing beacon of ignorance The Huffington Post:
“Fox News averaged 2.25 million total viewers in prime time for the third quarter, up 2% over the previous year. That’s more than CNN (946,000, down 30%) and MSNBC (788,000, down 10%) combined.”
The article also points out that Fox News also has the Top 10 cable news shows.
Even the New York Times cannot deny the dominance of Fox News and the fall of their competitors:
“CNN, which created the all-news cable network almost 30 years ago, hit a new competitive low with its prime-time programs in October, with three of its four programs between 7 and 11 p.m. finishing fourth and last among the cable news networks.”
They go on to accuse Fox News of simple opinion based reporting that CNN’s “hard news reporting” cannot compete. Yeah right, no partisan reporting on CNN. Still, they cannot ignore the dominance of Fox News’ Studio B, hard news that no one has accused of being partisan. “Its newscasts are also far ahead of CNN programs. Its 7 p.m. show, anchored by Shepard Smith, regarded as a non-ideological program, dwarfs every CNN show in prime time.”
The list keeps going and going and there does not seem to be any limit to the growth of Fox News viewership. Those in the mainstream can lay blame wherever they wish but the facts are the facts, Fox is on top and its not because viewers disagree with their reporting.
The 1776 Blog 
I think student news is way better.