Wednesday, June 30

Cable News: Fox is King of a Microscopic Genre

Sent to us by a couple of alert readers...

Business Wire - a conduit for press releases - has one up from Fox News, claiming a huge victory in the cable news war with 9 out of the top 10 shows.

But when you look at the numbers, it doesn't bode very well for the entire industry.

Network / 2nd Qtr 2004 / 2nd Qtr 2003 / %Change
Fox News / 0.8 / 1.3 / -38%
CNN / 0.5 / 0.8 / -38%
MSNBC / 0.2 / 0.4 / -50%
CNBC / 0.1 / 0.2 / -50%
Headline News / 0.2 / 0.2 / 0%
Essentially, 24/7, Fox and CNN lost 38% of their audience since last year, and the NBC cable nets lost half of theirs. The Iraq War played a huge part of last year's numbers, but as you can see, the percentages of people watching cable news now is essentially miniscule.

Not to minimalize Fox's grand triumph here, but between them and the goofball talk shows on CNBC/MSNBC, you've got about a point - or about 1.5 million viewers nationwide. CNN has half that.

So Fox is king of cable news. Next competition: Which tastes better: oak or pine?