Fox News Beats CBS More Than 2-to-1 in Convention Ratings
Rather Biased blog
September 03, 2004, 11:23:03 EDT
The Fox News Channel beat not only its cable news rivals in ratings during the primetime convention speeches of Senator Zell Miller and Vice President Dick Cheney, but also defeated the Big Three networks as well.
According to Nielsen Media Research, cable channel Fox News had 5.9 million viewers between 10 and 11 p.m. NBC was the closest competitor with 4.5 million and ABC had 3.3 million.
As for Dan Rather and CBS, their shallow talent pool and partisanship earned them the rock-bottom rating of 2.6 million viewers, less than half that of Fox.
When Georgia Senator Zell Miller came onto the stage, the announcer pronounced him the "conscience of the Democratic party." You wouldn't know that if you were watching CBS because Dan Rather and John Roberts were still talking.
Miller began his speech and Roberts and Rather continued to talk for another two minutes. Roberts, a former deejay, offered not-so-brilliant analysis that kept viewers from hearing one of the key lines of the speech: "And like you, I ask: Which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower and, yes, the backbone to best protect my family?"
If you were unfortunate enough to have been watching CBS, you can read Zell Miller's two-minute message here for the first time:
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Thank you very much. Thank you.
Since I last stood...
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you very much.
Since I last stood in this spot, a whole new generation of the Miller family has been born: four great grandchildren. Along with all the other members of our close-knit family, they are my and Shirley's most precious possessions. And I know that's how you feel about your family, also.
Like you, I think of their future, the promises and the perils they will face. Like you, I believe that the next four years will determine what kind of world they will grow up in.
And like you, I ask: Which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower and, yes, the backbone to best protect my family?
(APPLAUSE)
The clear answer to that question has placed me in this hall with you tonight. For my family is more important than my party.
(APPLAUSE)
There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future, and that man's name is George W. Bush.
(APPLAUSE)
In the summer of 1940, I was an 8-year-old boy living in a remote little Appalachian valley. Our country was not yet at war, but even we children knew that there were some crazy man across the ocean who would kill us if they could.
President Roosevelt, in a speech that summer, told America, "All private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger."
At this point Rather finally said, "We go to the podium now and Senator Zell Miller."
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NBC anchor Tom Brokaw is retiring at the end of the election. One wonders why he will retire and Dan Rather is not, considering Rather is older (even older than Walter Cronkite at the time of his retirement) and, unlike Brokaw, has dwelt in the ratings basement since the eighties. |
