No trust-y, no watch-y, no read-y. Mainstream news has gone with the wind.
Sun 10:18 pm +01:00, 5 Mar 2023
Zerohedge published some Nielsen ratings for the cable news shows in the past week, revealing a complete tanking of CNN.
MSNBC is also doing poorly compared to FOX, which is the only one doing OK. In the week of Jan. 16, FOX had 1.4 million viewers, MSNBC 629,000, and CNN 444,000. So FOX has 2.2 times the viewers of MSNBC and 3.2 times the viewers of CNN, a drubbing. But the real news is in what is not being circled in the news ratings: almost NO ONE is watching the news anymore, especially those under 55. Old people are the only ones still tuning in, and even their numbers have dropped like a stone from the heyday of news programming. It is sort of like the Hollywood numbers I reported here, but even worse. Mainstream news is Gone with the Wind. FOX had 1.4 million viewers. . . in a country of 330 million. Not so good.
In comparison, Walter Cronkite had 30 million viewers in a country of 200 million. So Cronkite pulled in 15% of the entire nation, including children. While FOX is pulling in .4%. CNN is pulling in .13%. Cronkite was 115 times more popular than CNN. Check out these numbers from the same article: In the 25-54 age group, the all important money demographic (and of course the pointer to the future), we have FOX 176,000 MSNBC 69,000 CNN 93,000 Wow, that’s quite a drop from overall, isn’t it? Only 13% of FOX’s audience is under age 55! Only 11% of MSNBC’s is. That means that Cronkite at CBS was 750 times more popular than MSNBC in the main demographic. Choke on it, Rachel Maddow. But let’s keep doing this easy math. If we add up the current numbers, we find .75% of the country is watching the news each night on TV from the top three cable stations, and about double that from the big three (CBS, NBC, ABC), while in 1970 about 1/3rd was watching the big three mainstream stations. Which means TV news has lost 2.25/33 = 93% of its possible viewership.
And it is even worse in the main demographic, where cable news is pulling in .2% of that group. The big three may double that (if we are generous), giving us a total of .6%. Whereas the big three were doing just as good with the youth in 1970 as they were doing with old people, which means they had a third of that demographic. So mainstream news has lost 97% of its possible viewership in that demographic. This is why the big three quit using Nielsen in 2021: the numbers were so embarrassing CBS, NBC, and ABC yanked accreditation from Nielsen and began making up their own numbers. They are claiming a recent surge, but no one in his right mind believes it. Since they are selling the same lies as CNN and MSNBC, they must be tanking at the same rate. But that drop in the main demographic tells us something else.
That means 87% of FOX’s news audience is old people. 89% of MSNBC’s news audience is old people. 80% of CNN’s news audience is old people.
That explains why you see so many commercials for old-people drugs on those shows, I guess, as well as adult diapers, heating pads, life insurance, etc. Mainstream news is a dinosaur, going extinct in front of our eyes.
Good riddance and may it rest in hell. Why is this happening? Because, as reported last summer by a Gallup poll, almost 90% don’t trust TV news, and 84% don’t trust print. Same numbers as above, as you see. No trust-y, no watch-y, no read-y.
http://mileswmathis.com/tricer.pdf
First published January 30, 2023
