Free Republic

Staffers at Fox News Channel are wondering just how low the ratings will go in a post-Tucker Carlson world. The latest Nielsen television ratings, released Monday, show that more than half of Carlson’s audience has turned off the channel. On Friday night a mere 1.1 million viewers tuned in to Carlson’s old time slot. By comparison, Carlson average roughly 3 million viewers in his final week. A Rasmussen Reports poll shows Carlson was actually more popular than Fox News. Of likely U.S. voters surveyed, 59% surveyed said they had a favorable view of Carlson compared with 52% for Fox. More...

News anchor Norah O’Donnell’s salary was reportedly slashed by more than half at CBS Evening News as the struggling news program continues to make substantial budget and cost cuts, Radar has learned.According to The Post, CBS News re-signed the 48-year-old news anchor in April for a yearly salary of $3.8 million – which is a remarkably less sum than the $8 million she was previously making to host the evening news program. But while O’Donnell accepted the new pay package, an insider familiar with the negotiations revealed that CBS executives offered the anchor a “low ball” sum that they “expected...

Adam Silver sat down for an interview with Rachel Nichols on NBA Countdown earlier this week, and indicated that the social justice messaging that you see on the courts and the backs of players’ jerseys will be “largely left off the floor” next season: Here is the relevant question and answer: Rachel Nichols: The NBA has certainly been the most visible billion-dollar organization championing social justice and civil rights. As you noted in your press conference the other day, though, that has not been universally popular. How committed are you to being that going forward? Adam Silver: We’re completely committed...

NBA ratings are continuing to decline despite games becoming increasingly more important. The troubling trend is extending to Game 7s, previously the most highly-anticipated events in all of basketball.

Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James has officially backed Joe Biden for President after previously stumping for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign. In a clip that will air Wednesday on Vice, James told Atlantic columnist Jemele Hill and her co-host, Cari Champion, that he will once again be campaigning for the Democrats’ ticket. “We are at a time where we need change,” James said in the clip, which appears to have been recorded before the Lakers’ Game 1 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers in the first-round of the NBA playoffs on Tuesday night. “In order for change, it’s all...

MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" appears desperate to get back in the good graces of The New York Times, constantly touting its headlines and praising its reporters on the heels of her far-left show being shunned by the paper. Maddow -- and occasional fill-in hosts -- have mentioned the New York Times at least a whopping 41 times on her show since May 30, when Vanity Fair reported that the paper wanted its reporters to stay far away from far-left and far-right programs. That included Maddow's, because it was too liberal, even for the paper that is often considered left-leaning...

President Trump questioned in a tweet Sunday whether two Fox News hosts were trained by CNN, the network he refers to as “fake news.” “Were @FoxNews weekend anchors, @ArthelNeville and @LelandVittert, trained by CNN prior to their ratings collapse?” Trump posted. ” In any event, that’s where they should be working, along with their lowest rated anchor, Shepard Smith!”

After seventeen years in syndication, Laura Ingraham will end her daily talk show at the end of the year while launching a new daily podcast through PodcastOne. PodcastOne parent Courtside Entertainment Group has served as Ingraham’s syndicator since 2013. Ingraham says that the toll of hosting her nightly Fox News Channel program on top of the radio show and raising three children took a toll, “Although I will greatly miss my radio listeners and affiliates, working late nights and early mornings has taken a toll on my family life. Plus, my radio audience is smart, savvy and committed, and I...

GLAAD’s “Where We Are on TV” report for a third consecutive year forecasts an all-time high in the number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender and queer (LGBTQ) characters on TV, while also noting that both greater racial diversity and gender parity has been achieved among those roles. Broadcast TV’s representation of LGBTQ characters in the 2018-19 TV season is forecast to be 8.8 percent (or 75 out of 859 series regular roles), up nearly one-third from 2017-18 to mark an all-time high. (Broadcast TV also will have 38 recurring LGBTQ characters, up from last season’s 28.) The CW ranks...

This morning Ed wrote about the anticipated (and delivered) crash and burn of the ratings for last night’s Emmys. I suppose I contributed to that in a small way since I was watching football. In my Twitter feed, I only saw two of the conservatives I follow commenting on the show so that seemed to be a fairly common practice among our tribe. The initial scoring put them in position to be one of the worst rated Emmys outings of the modern era. This led a few timid voices to meekly suggest this morning that just perhaps the show needs...

NBC’s flagship Sunday Night Football game had its smallest audience in five years this week, evidence of the NFL’s new deflation issue. The game between Indianapolis and Houston reached 13.6 million viewers, removing the weekly broadcast from its usual spot at or very close to the top of the Nielsen company ratings. CBS’ Thursday night game scored slightly higher. …

American Idol ratings hit a series low last week, dropping to a 1.4 in the desirable 18-49 demographic. Even when head to head competition with The Voice was no longer a threat (the rival show aired a special results show at 8 pm) the numbers stayed flat this week. Once the highly rated FOX show, Empire left the Wednesday night lineup, the show began to falter. The Wrap notes, however, that Idol is still ahead of the final season of the cancelled X Factor. Heading into this week the two regular editions of “Idol” were averaging a combined 2.9 rating...

Make no mistake, Fox News is still the ratings king. But the recent May numbers show that while all the cable channels had a decline in ratings (which is normal for May), Fox News was far from spared, with some of its lowest ratings in 12 years. While Fox dominates with the top 14 shows in overall viewers, the total day average for Fox News in the key advertising demographic of the 25- to 54-year-old category was 177,000 viewers, only the second time Fox has gone below a 200,000 average since 2001. Another key factor coming from May ratings is...

Anchors aren't known for admitting their shortcomings but Campbell Brown is accepting defeat. The eponymous host of CNN's "Campbell Brown" has stepped down from the "toughest timeslot in cable news" due to low ratings. "Simply put, the ratings for my program are not where I would like them to be," Brown said in a statement released Tuesday. "It is largely for this reason that I am stepping down as anchor of CNN’s 'Campbell Brown.’ " Brown added that she had been ruminating over the move "for some time" and that she felt the urge to reveal the truth behind her...

One of the pet peeves of your humble correspondent is reporters who slam people or policies via the device of "some say" or "critics say" when in fact it is really their own position. However, they can't say what they really think in order to put up the false front of "neutrality." Such was the case of Katie Couric on the CBC Evening News last night in which she used her Notebook commentary to slam Senator Joe Lieberman for having unethical motives in opposing health care public opposition and an expansion of Medicare: There's a new movie coming out next...

CBS sending Couric to Iraq 'Evening News' anchor sets Mideast trip By MICHAEL LEARMONTH Get ready for Katie Couric -- Phase II. One year after Couric jumped from NBC's "Today" to CBS in a big-money talent deal, the "Evening News" anchor is embarking on a high-risk tour of Iraq and Syria to revive the broadcast. Announcement comes just days after an Iraqi translator working for CBS was killed in Baghdad. CBS said Monday the translator had been found dead following his abduction just hours after leaving work at CBS News' Baghdad bureau. Couric has never been to Iraq, and she...

On Tuesday's Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann fretted about an Oval Office meeting of President Bush and several conservative talk radio hosts -- verbally tagged by Olbermann as "right-wing radio yackers" and labelled on-screen as the "Legion of Doom" -- as the Countdown host contended that Bush was devoting "90 minutes worth of your taxpayer dollars" to the meeting. And in an amusing faux pas, Olbermann's staff, for the second time in less than a year, accidentally displayed a photograph of former liberal Democratic Senator Max Cleland instead of conservative talk radio host Neal Boortz. During the show's opening...

CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush is taking time to explain himself, open up to the public in new ways and court Congress as he tries to breathe life into a presidency beset by sagging ratings and influence. With a job approval rating under 40 percent, Bush, who went to his Crawford ranch for a quiet weekend, has a long way to go. Aides acknowledge it will take a while to rebuild his image, and much will depend on the outcome of the Iraq war. White House staffers, who have long limited the president’s appearances to speeches and photo opportunities with...

'Hardball' host Chris Matthews discussed the latest in the Plame leak case with MSNBC's Amy Robach on Wednesday morning. Here's an excerpt of what he had to say: ...............If there are indictments, they're going to be probably in the vice president's office, they're probably going to come next week and they are going to blow this White House apart. It's going to be unbelievable. I think the people watching right now who are voters better start paying attention to this issue. It's not just about whether somebody's name was leaked, it's about whether we went to war under false pretenses...

A high-ranking executive siphons off government money intended for inner-city children. The company tries to wash its hands of the problem. Where is the New York Times to cover the story? Where are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to demand money and an apology? We're talking about Air America's emerging charity scandal. Liberals wish it would go away. It won't, not least because over the weekend it emerged that New York state attorney general Eliot Spitzer has opened an investigation. Like the New York City Department of Investigation, his office wants to find out what happened to the more than...