May proved that, when it comes to hard news, CNN has the most to gain. Blessed by the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, the torrent of tornados and the continuing conflict in Libya, CNN's primetime audience grew by 34%. FoxNews and MSNBC both maintained larger audiences with their primetime talk shows, but FoxNews was up only 2% (the 17% decline in Glenn Beck's ratings certainly accounted for that) and MSNBC 11%. Occasional viewers still jump to CNN on major stories.
In primetime demographics, year to year, CNN was up 54% among viewers 18-49, while MSNBC was up 10% and Fox was down 7%. In the demographic where the three news nets make their most money, 25-54s, CNN was up 55%, MSNBC 19% and Fox was down 5%. I don't want to get too excited about this, because both Fox and MSNBC had more total viewers in that category than CNN did, but in the 18-49s, CNN edged MSNBC by 3,000 viewers -- I know that's a statistical dead heat, but I take some comfort from it. Among 18-34s (an age where hardly anyone watches television news), CNN gained an astounding 72%, Fox gained 21% and MSNBC 6%. Even with that, MSNBC still edged CNN in younger viewers. For the record, Headline News finished a dismal fourth in all categories.
Interestingly, CNN finished second in all categories on a total day basis. It was up 36% in total viewers, 50% in 18-49s, 66% in 18-34s and 47% in 25-54s. FoxNews was spottier, up 5% in total viewers, down 9% in 18-49s, up 2% in 18-34s and dead-even in 25-54s. (Despite their mixed results, Fox managed to be number one in all categories.) Like CNN, MSNBC was up in categories, but their gains were smaller than CNN's and CNN maintained the runner up spot. Headline News again behaved dismally.
The point of all this is that, when major news breaks, people who are not regular news viewers turn to CNN for what they think is important. Now, if CNN could only find a way to make more of their news seem important, they might provide real competition to Fox.
I think that one of CNN's problems has been its leadership, since my old comrade, Burt Reinhardt, retired in 1989. All of his successors came from outside the company, one from newspapers, and two from network backgrounds. None of them truly understood what CNN was meant to be. CNN's new news boss is Ken Jautz, who grew up in the CNN culture, may understand CNN's mission better, and over the next couple of years, will, I hope, turn the network around.
NO, news does not have two sides. It has the truth and that is all. When I hear the most annoying voice on news, Wolf going on about let's hear from both sides now I want to throw up and I quit watching CNN as a result. I got so tired of their constantly getting people to pick fights with each other for ratings.
When I used to hear him let a politician and lets' be honest more often than not it was the conservatives, just get up and tell lies and he or one of the other hosts would refuse to call them out on the lie it gives no credibility and they use the lame and tired of excuse of "well it's their opinion."
The one that completely lost me for CNN was the nonsense about death panels. Wolf let the cons go on about how the democratic plan for health care was all about rationing and cutting off grandma because she was old and under that plan she would not be allowed health care and Wolf didn't say a damend word about it. I lost what little respect I had for him at that point.
Ever so often I'll check in for about 2 minutes and sure enough he's doing the same thing. Allowing lies to pass as truth. Still saying it's their opinion.
NO it is not their opinion, they are lying and when you allow politicians of either side to lie all the time without so much as a "no that is not what happened" then why bother listening to them or watching them.
That changed in 2008 when your network and journalists became little more than unpaid campaign workers for Obama. Your network lost all credibility in political reporting.
Sorry, it was your own bias that ruined what was a decent (if not great) news network.
I've seen and heard statements like yours before. People that believe Obama is perfect and can do no wrong seem like the coverage by MSNBC and CNN. Go figure. They give adoring coverage and Obama's faithful sheeple lap it up. They then disbelieve that there's any bias because the coverage is so positive because Obama is perfect in every way.
Fauxnooze on the other hand did the opposite and carried nothing but McCain and Sister Sarah were practically the only people who could save America from liberals and in particular that non American Obama.
So please stop with the sore loser rhetoric and just admit it, the GOP had two very very bad candidates, one who came across as stumbling and old and one that just came across as dumb and who has proven that a thousand times over.
http://markhumphyrs.com/media.obama.html
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/07/AR2008110702895.html