Schopenhauer explains why Fox usually beats CNN and MSNBC in the ratings

[Orange Buffoon]

“The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.”

—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher and author, “Religion: A Dialogue and Other Essays,” 1851.

[Straw Man]

1. And ...

Last edited Tue Dec 7, 2021, 04:09 AM - Edit history (1)

... they have a corner on the MAGA market. The reality-based community splits between CNN and MSNBC.

[scarytomcat]

38. simple reason ... it is free

cnn and msnbc cost extra,,, fox comes with basic cable
you get what you pay for

[Scrivener7]

2. Or as Omar said, "Fools love a fool."

[Kaleva]

3. Fox ratings are small compared to CBS, NBC or ABC.

About 1% of the adult population watches Fox Prime News on any given evening.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

28. The Majors often major league amplify the Fox media circus and set it up on

the same levels as…in example…the TRUTH, so I see thst as a problem with only one solution.

Media Matters devotes a lot of its media content research into proving this without doubt.

[Kaleva]

37. About 20% of the adult population watches the news

If one adds up all the viewers of CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, CNN, MSNBC and others.

I wouldn't be surprised if the news feeds on Facebook has a much higher total audience then all the news networks combined.

[Mr. Evil]

4. Focksnooze is right about one thing.

Every single day they prove that P.T. Barnum was right. There's a sucker born every minute.

[calimary]

22. Yep. I knew it the minute I first saw their commercial bumpers.

The bright lights and colors and splashy visuals and “bursts,” and a punctuating bell clang. And a vigorous and driving musical track, underscoring a sense of excitement. And the carnival barker/game-show announcer’s voice repeating the mantra again and again, to drive the message home: “FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAair and BALANCED!”

Got your attention and your eyeballs. You were PLAYED like a violin. You couldn’t help it. You had to look, and it was hard to look away.

And psychologically, message delivered. Like an earwig eating into your brain through entry via your eyes and ears. Ol’ bastard Roger Ailes was a master of media manipulation. He knew what would ring the ol’ chimes and romance viewers like a siren song wrapped in fly paper.

[Caliman73]

5. There was a study, probably dated now, but likely still relevant...

It noted that 75% of people who identified as Conservative watched Fox News exclusively, while people who identified as Liberal typically listed 6 outlets as their sources for information.

That will tend to skew ratings when one outlet has the majority of viewers in a demographic.

I don't imagine much has changed, even with the emergence of other more right wing networks.

[Kaleva]

7. That would mean only a small percentage of conservatives watch Fox News exclusively.

Given the only about 1%-2% of the adult population watches Fox News of any given evening


&quot CNSNews.com) -- Polling data from 2019 show that America is "center-right" politically, with 37% describing themselves as "conservative," 35% saying they are "moderate," and only 24% stating they are "liberal.""

https://www.cnsnews.com/article/national/michael-w-chapman/gallup-americans-ideology-37-conservative-24-liberal-35-moderate

[Caliman73]

13. Even a small percentage would equal more concentration.

If the super majority of even a small group is exclusively watching one outlet, it will beat out a similar sized or bigger group that is dispersed between multiple outlets.

Fox gets about 3 million viewers a night, compared to the legacy broadcasters who get something like 20 million a night. The OP isn't talking about Fox beating everyone, just other cable news outlets.

The point is that it is baked into the viewing pattern differences between Conservatives and Liberals that an outlet catering specifically to Conservatives is going to have higher ratings. The Liberals get their information from a variety of sources and Conservatives gravitate towards 1.

Also, I think that those polls are not very reliable. If you ask someone if they are "conservative, moderate, or liberal" I would venture a guess that many do not know what exactly those positions are. I would imagine if you put policies that were along the lines of of the ideologies, there would be a difference.

Consistently, when policies are put forth without attributing them to any political party, large majorities of people support liberal or progressive ideas over conservative policies.

[Kaleva]

36. About 20% of the adult population watches the news

so we are talking about a super majority of a very small (single digits?) minority.

[leftieNanner]

6. The thing that really bothers me about Fox

Is that my family supports them - not with viewership (NEVER) - but with cable TV dollars.

Because we pay for cable, we are required to pay for Fox. Don't have any choice.

So they can afford to run Tucker every night with no advertisers because ol' Tuck gets my money.

[ancianita]

8. I hear you. But most viewers know you get the quality that ad buy pays for.

[BlueJac]

9. K&R

[Rebl2]

10. Wasn't there

a time msnbc was beating them in the ratings during the evening?

[Caliman73]

14. Rachel Maddow was for a time.

There wasn't a wide swath of MSNBC shows winning in their time slots, but Rachel did over the span of several months.

[llashram]

11. ++

[Harker]

12. Schopenhauer also said something about the importance of not mistaking the acquisition of books

with acquiring the contents there of.

His aphorisms are often entertaining, but his misogyny renders him practically moot to me.

[ancianita]

15. Maybe, but not in ad buy.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

17. Trying to read graph, his means newsmax propaganda earns 217 million a year in ad revenue?

[ancianita]

19. Now that you mention it, I don't know. Sounds right, though. Hold on.

[ancianita]

20. Can't verify cuz the source is a paywalled market news site. It's a bit of perspective; even if not

reputable, doesn't mean it's not useful or disreputable. Sorry. I just wanted a different angle on inputs to the news besides viewership.

For instance, I prefer to get info about why Fox probably won't beat the other two in ratings in the long run. Unless it cheats and rigs data. Anyway, here's an interesting comparison that could support why Fox will drop.



from http://www.bmsg.org/resources/publications/primetime-cable-news-analysis-host-contributor-guest-appearances-media-diversity/

[Alexander Of Assyria]

25. Interesting. Have a couple of takeaways from this bar graph....

1) no one under 30 watches anyone cable news
2) Fox viewers are older but not by all that much as I would have thought.

Wonder what an viewership average IQ bar graph side by side would look like.

[ancianita]

30. Thank you. That's very interesting. I'm not really surprised about the under 30 group

from what I've heard from the people I know in that age group. Heh heh. Good luck getting any Fox viewers to submit to IQ tests even though they were invented by and for the military.

If data collection can help in that direction, some crunchers already probably can tease out bar graphs you mention. Maybe reddit might have something.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

24. Read. It's right there in the graph. Break it down. Tell us where it hurts, okay?

It means NOTHING like your post title. And you didn't use a search engine did you?

Ad$ per average prime-time household, annualized

Ad$ means Advertising dollars

per means each

average means a total number divided by a factor. The factor in this case is number of prime-time households.

prime-time household means number of households watching each channel during prime-time, which is a specific set of evening hours that you can look up with a search engine for the specifics.

annualized means made on a yearly basis.


So, it means that each year advertisers in aggregate spent about $217 per household watching their advertisements during prime-time on Newsmax. You get this by taking a year's total prime-time advertising spending on a channel and dividing it by the number of households who watched. In a more detailed explanation, astute readers would realize that you have to weight it by actual hours watched, or even 15 minute segments, because some watch every night the whole time and others watch more occasionally. The asterisk points to how the figures were derived by simpler calculation with simpler averaging and it seems to count the whole day's revenue as prime-time revenue. It is possible that lumping it like that skews against an outlet that has a more even spread of viewers through the day.

No million dollars. Not $217 million.

When reading graphs inspect for legends explaining the axes. In the case it is clear what the y-axis represents because it is labelled at the top of the bars: dollars. Not millions of dollars. Dollars.

If you had used a search engine you would have found that Newsmax earns about $25 million in advertising revenue in a year, and that includes revenue outside of prime-time. We can help you with search engines too.



Ultimately this says that advertising dollars are rather evenly distributed per watching household regardless of what the channel is. An eyeball is an eyeball. Newsmax is cheaper because some advertisers don't want to be associated with it.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

26. So I missed a zero at the end, thanks.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

27. You missed more than a zero. You missed six of them. $217.00 is not $217,000,000.00

AND

$25 million is not $217 million.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

29. Newsmax corporation earns $27 million in ad revenue per year, total? Yes?

Not two hundred and seventeen and change, surely?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

32. No. 25 does not equal 27. Here's how to use a search engine:

Type into the search engine

newsmax ad revenue

and press the Enter key.

You will get something like this at the top of the results:

About 976,000 results (0.39 seconds)

Newsmax TV Sees Growth, But Metrics Well Behind Big Cable ...
https://www.mediapost.com › publications › article › ne...
Dec 11, 2020 — Looking at the bigger picture, Newsmax TV is projected to pull in $25 million in ad revenue this year, according to S&P Global Market ...

What is Newsmax? 10 Facts About the Conservative Network
https://www.adweek.com › convergent-tv › newsmax-c...
Nov 23, 2020 — Newsmax TV, meanwhile, is on track to generate an estimated $25 million in net ad revenue, according to Kagan (which does not track digital ...

So.

$25 million

This is a useful skill to know and I recommend it.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

35. Search engines? What a novel concept.

[ancianita]

31. Thank you, Bernardo. I really could use the math help, too. That I took statistics doesn't mean

I apply that learning very well from 40 years ago. Even if I did get the numbers clearly, I couldn't explain them nearly as thoroughly and clearly as you.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

33. You are welcome, ancianita. Sometimes I enjoy teaching a little too much! . . . nt

[ancianita]

34. More 'enjoy', please! All the students will gather!

[Alexander Of Assyria]

16. Explains most religious texts.

[Grins]

18. How to kill Fox (and OANN, and Newsmax)

Every month, you, and I, and millions of others pay Fox News about $2 that comes to the tune of $1.8 BILLION dollars a year to Fox. And that is two to three times what CNN and MSNBC receive. Because the subscriber model Verizon, Comcast, Direct TV, et al use, bundles it's programing options. You HAVE to buy it. THEY HAVE have to buy it at Fox prices.

Take away that $1.8 Billion and goodbye Tucker and Hannity and many more!! Make the cable providers only charge for the cable stations their customers want. Be pro-choice! Be Free Market!

[usaf-vet]

23. Because the majority of the listeners to Fox News barely made it out of the 3rd grade.

As a bit of a side note, 600,000 people die of cancer each year, BUT that number would sadly be higher IF it were a disease that one person could pass to another by close contact. If you walked with 2 feet of a terminal cancer patient or sat next to one on a plane, you are not going to catch their cancer, but MTG isn't smart enough the see the difference.

Or even worse, she does know the difference but also realizes she is playing in a room of third graders.

[calimary]

21. Ooooooh! Quote of the year!