Well…It’s not because of Haiti coverage, that’s for sure:
http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/item/totalearthquakecoverage.jpg
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Fox News viewers come for conservative commentary, not news.

Ameriblog repeated a media matters caim that FOX news was ignoring the earthquake coverage.

“On January 13, Fox News’ three top-rated programs for 2009 — The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity, and Glenn Beck — devoted a combined total of less than 7 minutes of coverage to the earthquake in Haiti, instead choosing to air such things as Beck’s hour-long interview with Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly’s discussion of Comedy Central host Jon Stewart, and Sean Hannity’s advocacy for Massachusetts candidate Scott Brown’s Senate campaign. By contrast, the content of MSNBC’s three top-rated shows underscored the significance of the Haiti disaster; Countdown, The Rachel Maddow Show, and Hardball devoted a total of more than two hours to the earthquake.”

Of course, they chose to not include the other half of the statement, about Shep and Baier.

I had left this comment:

” Other Fox News shows — such as Special Report with Bret Baier and The Fox Report with Shepard Smith — did devote extensive coverage to the earthquake.” – Media Matters http://mediamatters.org/research/201001140029

“To be fair, Fox did have extensive afternoon coverage on Wed and today, the best in my mind coming from Shep Smith at both 3 and 7 est.” – brianinnyc 2 hours ago in reply to Campbell62

The difference between news and commentary programming. FOX news covered the earthquake non-stop. The commentary programs commented on the tragedy, and continued with their normal planned schedules. News vs. commentary. Oreilly’s talking points have been devoted to Haiti since the earthquake happened. Beck had pre-planned shows with Palin and a panel of African american conservatives.

Since all Olbermann and Maddow ever do are mock FOX, they were easily able to ignore their normally scheduled FOX bashing to cover the earthquake.

And, not all viewers like to watch coverage of a tragedy 24/7… if people wanted further coverage, they could turn to CNN. If they watched the news all day on FOX, they might have preferred commentary in the evening. As someone who follows these events closely (watches lots of coverage throughout the day), most often you see the same footage and info over and over again, hour after hour.

I guess the ratings will tell…

And I guess they do…

I forgot to link: http://www.americablog.com/2010/01/top-fox-news-shows-basically-ignored.html#comment-29960790

The comment section was then filled with all kinds of ugly attacks, calling all Fox viewers racist, who don’t care about “brown people”….all because of a report based on lies.

Looking at the ratings of Bret, Shep and Greta, who did extensive coverage, it sure looks like more FOX viewers turned in to watch the coverage of Haiti than msnbc and CNN viewers….combined.