Rating the Airliner Story

Townhall.com ^ | March 20, 2014 | Rich Galen

[Kaslin]

A minor food fight has broken out among news anchors over the amount of attention the missing Malaysian airliner is getting on the Cable news programs.

There is no question that CNN has glommed onto this story and is not letting go. The other cable nets are often leading with the latest theory, conjecture, or unsourced leak, but then go onto other things like the Russian annexation of Crimea.

The other day Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly - the master of all he surveys in the ratings - said that, according to MediaBistro.com, "Watching some of this coverage is painful" after criticizing a rival network for doing five minutes on a possible electrical fire on board.

I didn't see that segment, but it is impossible to miss the fact that CNN is now wall-to-wall in its Flight 370 coverage and I wondered why they were betting so heavily on that one story.

The answer is: Ratings.

I looked at a comparison among the three major cable news programs from this past Monday March 17, and two weeks earlier, Monday March 3 - before the jet disappeared.

Across the board the CNN ratings are up. Way up.

There are two ways of looking at ratings. Total viewers and those who are "in the demo." The demo is short for demographic - adults from 25-54 years.

I'm not in the demo. Even when I was between the ages of 25-54, I wasn't in it.

Nevertheless, looking at all viewers (not just those in the demo) we find that on a normal news day - March 3 - starting at 4 PM, Jack Tapper's CNN program drew about 580,000 viewers. This past Monday, with the non-stop coverage of the airliner, Tapper drew almost 800,000 viewers an increase of about 38%.

Alex Wagner's 4 PM show on MSNBC also showed significant gains, in her case about 27%. The loser in the time slot is Neil Cavuto whose 4 PM Fox program lost about 13% of its viewers although at 1.3 million it still crushed the other two.

Moving to five o'clock, FNC's The Five led the group on March 3 with about 2.1 million viewers. Two weeks later they pretty much held their own with a 3 percent rise in viewers to 2.2 million.

The Ed Show on MS got a 6.7 percent boost but the big winner in terms of growth was Wolf Blitzer's 5 PM program that went from about 650,000 viewers on March 3 to 950,000 on March 17 a 46% jolt.

At 6 PM Bret Baier's program was flat over the two nights (but still drew 2.1 million viewers). Al Sharpton lost about 6 percent of his viewers but Blitzer - taking over the whole hour rather than splitting it with Crossfire - kept his 950,000 viewers which was an increase of 38%.

Moving along to 7 PM Greta, like Baier, was flat Monday-over-Monday with about 1.8 million viewers. Chris Matthews lost a whopping 14% of his viewers but Erin Burnett saw an enormous increase of over 77 percent, raising her audience to 892,000.

At 8 PM - the wholly owned subsidiary of Bill O'Reilly - Anderson Cooper's audience rose by nearly 41 percent over two weeks earlier to 836,000. Chris Hayes' MSNBC program was down about 8 percent as were Bill O'Reilly's numbers: Off about 9 percent.

O'Reilly still won the night with a total of over 2.8 million viewers, but that would explain his crankiness at the constant coverage by CNN. That nine percent loss represented 274,000 viewers.

The biggest loser in this comparison occurred at the nine o'clock hour when MSNBC's Rachel Maddow lost nearly 19 percent of her audience while the Piers Morgan slot on CNN gained nearly 78%.

At 10 PM Lawrence O'Donnell dropped about 15 percent of his MSNBC audience while a "Special Report" on CNN gained nearly 78% in that time slot that has proved so difficult for CNN to solve. Hannity held his own, gaining about 4 percent in the 10 PM hour.

CNN has not had much - you should pardon the expression - good news lately, lagging in almost every category in almost every time slot.

But over the period of the missing airplane MSNBC has lost some 288,000 viewers; Fox has held about steady with an increase of 29,000 over the course of the two nights, but an additional 2.7 million people watched CNN from 4 PM through midnight on March 17 than they had two Mondays previous.

That's how you rate an airplane story.

[Parley Baer]

“Watching some of this coverage is painful” after criticizing a rival network for doing five minutes on a possible electrical fire on board.”

Hey Bill, the easy answer is don’t watch it if it bothers you.

[publius911]

I didn't see that segment, but it is impossible to miss the fact that CNN is now wall-to-wall in its Flight 370 coverage and I wondered why they were betting so heavily on that one story.
The answer is: Ratings.

I have watched CNN more in the last couple of weeks than in the previous 10 years.
Why? Hard news; not Obama-managed, not moron-liberal managed.
Kudos when kudos are due.

And regardless what Bloviator O'Reilly whines about, CNN's wall to wall coverage is a plus, since no person with a life can watch any hard news network 24/7.

If CNN is smart, they will learn the obvious lesson. Hard news beats questionable, uninformed and idiot opinion every time. Specially with a stable of progressive Obamabots, which until the airliner mystery came along were essentially the OMNN, Obama Managed News Network.

There is also a message there for FOX, if they are humble enough to see it. ALL their regular opinion programs are predictable and redundant, when a hard news world event breaks.

For the moment, my most watched Cable News Network is CNN. They probably still have the best world network and resources capable of instantly covering any event worldwide.
In spite of the embarrassingly inept ignorant of science, technology, geography, history and general knowledge talking heads.

[longtermmemmory]

I would have dropped Oreilly. He is just current affair tabloid tv on cable.

no substance at all.

[publius911]

Cheap huckster’s trick: keep the audience focused on your right hand so it isn’t watching what your left hand is doing.

Not a problem, if viewers are knowledgeable, engaged and interested, with a brain, and can also multi-task.

[publius911]

Shepard Smith and others on all the networks have gone with sensational claim after another without vetting the data with pilots that understand the physics of flight. They have done a great disservice to the public.

Hard to believe these talking heads are so ignorant. It is painful. Most of the issues discussed I could understand thoroughly after graduating high school; specially math, science and technology.

[the OlLine Rebel]

The 777 is not brand new.

[the OlLine Rebel]

You forgot shark attacks. That was big along with Levy, and partly on the tail of it.

[Terry L Smith]

theoilline reb le wrote:
“The 777 is not brand new.”

Having fully retired from the aerospace industry, and removing all my irons from any such fires, I remember that particular plane as the one most touted in airline commercials, and such. Therefore, it is new, to me.

When the aerospace business began to be dominated by union thugs, dullards, and Negroe politicians, it was time to find a new niche.

[Focault's Pendulum]

Now you MSM guys keep The People focused on the missing jet and away from impeachment?

Well at the very least, the health care debacle.

CNN barely mentions it and ABC's Nightline went 17 1/2 weeks without touching on it. The last mention from Nightline on health care was Nov. 14, 2013.