This Weekend’s Single Unanswered Question (012106): Will CNN Get Passed by MSNBC?
Bizzy Blog
Another installment in a nearly-regular series of mysteries and pseudo-mysteries (usually 3-4, but this time just one) this inquiring mind would like to have answers for (some links included may require free registration):
QUESTION: Can MSNBC catch CNN?
It’s not as outrageous a question as you might think — A look at last Wednesday’s ratings the MediaBistro Newser shows that CNN is, with the exception of Larry King, coming in much further behind Fox News than it is ahead of MSNBC. In a couple of isolated cases in the 25-54 demographic, MSNBC is ahead or virtually tied: Hardball beat out Wolf Blitzer and MSNBC’s Countdown is in a virtual tie with Paula Zahn.
What’s more, some media observers see CNN as losing whatever bearings still remained:
CNN is still sick with Fox envy — and it’s only getting worse
These must be great days to work at Fox News. Not only does the 24-hour cable channel beat rival CNN like a sick, sad mule, but Roger Ailes is so deep in the heads of CNN’s managers that every time they stumble over themselves in chaos — which is often — the chairman of Fox News looks like some kind of psyops genius.
….. If you watch CNN or Headline News with any regularity, then you know it won’t be long before the Next Big Blunder. Perhaps that news crawl at the bottom of the screen will read: “We’re Out of Ideas — Try MSNBC.”
….. There’s a sadness here. And it has nothing to do with CNN’s inability to “counter” Fox News with a respectable progressive slate of contributors. CNN used to be a reliable source for national and international news. Now it mostly chases storms and tragedy — and Fox.
For a long time now there has been this perception that Republicans watch Fox News, Democrats watch CNN, and MSNBC picks up the undecideds. But that’s simplistic. Though we may be heading, as a country, into an era where “news” channels will be defined by their ideology, godspeed to anyone left of center who can figure out what CNN wants to be.
The writer criticizes CNN’s recent hires of conservatives Glenn Beck (for a Headline News show), JC Watts, and Bill Bennett, and characterizes them as second-tier, which I guess remains to be seen.
In the meantime, CNN President Jonathan Klein, who became infamous during the height of Rathergate for his “pajamas” comment about bloggers, must be longing for the good old days of the mid-1990s, before Fox News and blogs gave people credible alternatives to WORMs (Worn-Out Reactionary Media, known to most as the Mainstream Media) like CNN.
For those of us old enough to remember, it’s hard to imagine that the news network that had Bernard Shaw reporting on the scene at the Baghdad bombings in The First Gulf War, and that was the only place to go for news during the runup to that war and the war itself, is such an also-ran. But they really did it to themselves. By toeing the liberal line for so many years, they made themselves totally vulnerable to an upstart like Fox.
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