Mediaite Study: Fox News Not Number One Cable Network In Covering ‘Christmas’

by Nando Di Fino | 5:23 pm, December 7th, 2011

» 14 comments

For the last few years, there’s been a great hullabaloo made over the “War on Christmas” — basically, the belief that companies, networks, and other public entities have phased out “Christmas” and replaced it with “holidays.” Fox News — led in the movement by Bill O’Reilly — has been a leader in the resistance of the movement on the opinion programming side, but we wanted to see if there were any other networks keeping “Christmas” in the lexicon, possibly in a more understated manner.

Using TVEyes, a search engine and database service that monitors every word spoken on almost every major television and radio station, we tracked the mention of “Christmas” and “holidays” on eight cable networks, from 12:01 a.m. Dec. 1, until 4 p.m. today. The stations were: Fox News, CNN, HLN, MSNBC, ESPN, CSPAN, QVC, and HSN (formerly the Home Shopping Network).

Here’s what we found:
(Note: Commercials are included in the TVEyes database)

Of the eight stations studied, QVC had the most mentions of “Christmas” since Dec. 1, with 614 (an average of 87.7 per day). Fox News came in second, with 410.

C-SPAN had the fewest mentions of “Christmas” (63), with ESPN (184) and CNN (190) also in the bottom three.

HSN led all stations in the study with 518 mentions of “holidays” (about 74 per day). QVC came in second (419 mentions), and HLN was third (165).

“Christmas” was mentioned 2,319 times since Dec. 1 on the eight channels. “Holidays” was said 1,382.

The “Christmas” to “holidays” ratio winner was MSNBC. The network had about 5.1 “Christmas” mentions for every “holidays.” Behind MSNBC was ESPN (4.4 ratio) and FNC (4.3).

The station with the lowest “Christmas” to “holidays” ratio was HSN. They had 0.7 “Christmas”es for every “holidays.” HSN was the only station to say “holidays” more than “Christmas” of the eight studied. QVC had the second-lowest, with a 1.5 ratio, while HLN was third, with 1.8.

Below, enjoy the full results of the study on “Christmas” vs. “Holiday” mentions on cable TV so far this month:

The War On Christmas
	Mentions of “Christmas”	Mentions of “Holidays”	Ratio
Fox News	410	96	4.27
CNN	190	67	2.84
HLN	292	165	1.77
MSNBC	224	44	5.09
ESPN	184	42	4.38
QVC	614	419	1.47
HSN	342	518	0.66
C-SPAN	63	31	2.03

CSPAN, ESPN, fox news, HLN, HSN, msnbc, QVC, War On Christmas

Anonymous

A “Christmas” to “Holiday” ratio counting? This tops anything Fox has done!
Anonymous

lol….Fox news mentioned “holidays” more than CNN or MSNBC……..hmmm
Anonymous

Tell me more about this war on Christmas. I need to know who to hate in this season of love.
Anonymous

Yes, and they are mentioned “Christmas” more than CNN or MSNBC….HMMMMM

I feel like this is a slow news week. For blogs AND cable news.
Moderate

You can hate the school Principal that expelled the third grader that said his teacher was cute. You give people authority and they take political correctness too far.
Anonymous

The ESPN results are probably skewed due to the NBA lockout and the fact that games will resume on “Christmas Day”. Which is much more about a day on the calendar than it is about the holiday, or Christmas v Holidays.
Anonymous

And what does have to do with the War on Christmas?
12voltman1

Happy Holidays Everyone!
Anonymous

Look at the ratio. MSNBC is more likely to mention Christmas compared to Fox News.
Anonymous

*yawns*
Anonymous

merry X-mas…
Anonymous

Who gives a shit?
Anonymous

http://cbcf.groupsite.com/discussion/topic/show/431234 Fox needs to get a freaking’ grip and stop this bull…
Anonymous

This war on Christmas is phoney enough already. O’Reilly needs to get a grip he isn’t going to win battle with the schools on Christmas since there liberal or fear of ACLU. and I don’t care if the stores say Merry Christmas or Happy Hoildays doesn’t matter to me anyways. Only thing is RI governor calling Christmas tree with Hoilday Tree it’s a Chrsitmas tree for cryin out loud but other than that It doesn’t matter what is said.