Taking a news breather.

 

Lucian3D | Deposit Photos

Adweek reported on Friday that for the week prior, according to Nielsen, the three top cable news channels -- Fox, CNN, and MSNBC -- continued to see a drop in viewership compared to prior to the election early last month. While Fox News is still blowing away its rivals (as it has done for the past two decades) with a 72% share of the prime-time audience, Adweek says, "MSNBC and CNN received below 20% of the share across both dayparts, a trend that has remained constant since Election Night." Among adults ages 25-54, CNN attracted 79,000 sets of eyeballs during prime time to 60,000 for MSNBC.  

If the ratings news held a bright spot for MSNBC, it was that viewership dropped way less during the week of November 18th than it had the previous week, after morning hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski admitted they'd gone down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump's ring. But overall, MSNBC viewership during prime time has dropped by 52 percent since November 5th.

Those dismal figures came on the heels of a report that Comcast is thinking of selling MSNBC (and Elon Musk has trolled that he's interested in buying it).

What's going on? It could just be a post-election ratings dip for the losing side. It's happened in previous elections, to both left- and right-leaning media. And this election loss was particularly disheartening to folks on the left. We'd seen this farce before, and we were sure the American people wouldn't want to live through it again -- and yet, here we are.

So folks are turning off the news on their TVs and the notifications on their phones -- for a couple of reasons. The Washington Post (free article at the link) quoted one MSNBC viewer as saying he thought the Monday-morning quarterbacking -- "the finger-pointing and bashing of the Democratic party" -- started way too soon. 

Another viewer told WaPo that she's not interested in revisiting the Trump-as-president horror show right now: "'I just don't even want to know what kind of outrageous thing he's going to do,' she says. 'I'm resigned to, "He's going to do outrageous things, and we'll deal with it when he's gone."'"

I hear that. It seemed to me like the media pivoted way too easily, post-election, to listicles of reasons why Harris didn't win. I was not ready for that. I'm still not ready. And having lived through one Trump freak show, it's been hard for me to gin up more than an eyeroll over his Cabinet picks. I know he's going to do outrageous things. Do I need to know the particulars in breathless detail right now?

After all, the holidays are upon us. That means gift shopping and wrapping, cookie baking, holiday concerts, and all the rest. As for TV viewing, well, there's a lot of comfort TV on offer: Christmas rom-coms, Charlie Brown, and the Grinch. And hey, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is celebrating its 60th anniversary by coming back to NBC this Friday. That sounds like must-see TV to me!

Does all that seem like escapism? I dunno. To me, it feels more like taking a breather. 

Joe Biden is still president. The country's safe for another seven weeks. Anything can happen in seven weeks. 

Not to say it will. But it could. 'Tis the season for miracles, after all.

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It seems unlikely to me that I was six years old (technically, a day shy of seven) when ol' Rudolph first flew on NBC. I've always thought I was a year or two younger than that. But I'm trusting the people who actually keep track of such things.

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These moments of bloggy denialism -- er, I mean news-breather blogginess -- have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Defining "mainstream media."

I shared a meme on Facebook earlier today. It's a photo of a bearded guy wearing a flannel shirt and a trucker hat, and obviously yelling. The text says, "Why the hell won't the media cover the story I saw on the news?" 

To introduce the meme, I wrote the following:

"Mainstream media won't cover it!"

Really? Where'd you hear about it?

"Fox News!"

My point, which I made in a follow-up comment, is that Fox News is a mainstream media outlet.

No, the altitude hasn't gotten to me. Hear me out.

What is the definition of mainstream? Merriam-Webster says it's "a prevailing current or direction of activity or influence." Further,  Merriam-Webster defines the phrase the mainstream as "the thoughts, beliefs, and choices that are accepted by the largest number of people."

That last definition implies that popularity is one metric of how mainstream something is. Indeed, we could all come up with examples of things that were once considered on the fringe and are now accepted as mainstream. I'm old enough to remember when bikinis were first introduced, and the brouhaha over how indecent they were. The original "scanty" bikini would be a tame two-piece swimsuit today. But my point is that once no decent girl would be seen in a bikini, and today the same style would be considered kinda prudish. In short, bikinis have gone mainstream.

And in that sense, Fox News is definitely mainstream. Look at cable news viewership for the second quarter of this year, as reported by Nielsen Media Research: Fox News had just under two million average viewers per day, nearly double that of its closest rival, MSNBC, at just over 1.2 million. CNN was third with just under 1.2 million. 

The most popular "news" show during that time period? Tucker Carlson Tonight on, you guessed it, Fox News.

I've put "news" in quotes for a reason. For all that Carlson plays a newsman on TV, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and he -- and yes, even Rachel Maddow on the left -- are entertainers. None of them does straight news. To be fair, the guys on the right make up a lot more of their content than Maddow does, but even Maddow employs partisan spin. 

To be clear, I'm leaving things like truthfulness and "truthiness" out of this discussion. I'm strictly looking at viewership numbers. And on that basis, this most recent showing for Fox News is no flash in the pan. In January, it notched 18 straight years as the most-watched cable news channel.

You could make the argument that MSNBC and CNN are both chasing liberal viewers, and if you put their numbers together, they top Fox News. But I'm not sure that's accurate. While viewers probably have a preference for either CNN or MSNBC, I'd bet people switch back and forth depending on whose show they want to watch.

Anyway, the point is that Fox News is number one, and has been number one for the better part of two decades. That seems pretty mainstream to me.

So if your argument is that Fox News shows stories the mainstream media won't touch? I hate to break it to you, but you literally got the story from the mainstream media.

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The new home report: I've opened all the boxes and unpacked everything that's going to be unpacked. It's even all put away, mostly. I have one tote without a permanent home and a short stack of papers to go through, and I still need to hang pictures. But the worst of it is done.

And now that I'm out of self-quarantine (whoo hoo!), I plan to get around town more. Expect photos. Maybe as soon as next week.

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These moments of argumentative blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Mask up! Social distance! Wash your hands!