Fewer people will trust 60 Minutes (or CBS ‘no bias’ non-investigations) following Sep 8, 2004 than trust Nielsen. :-D

Yes, I can do all that research on my own – including noting that SpongeBob and Hannah Montana regularly kick ALL the Cable News networks behinds. What I can do really wasn’t my point. It’s what I feel the responsibility of someone whose job it is to keep us informed is – to give us ALL the facts.

You know, the old “Who, What, When, Where, Why” credo. In much of today’s news, the “Why” is too often thrown to the curbside. I, for one, like the “Why.” I grew up in a time when “in-depth” reporting was the norm rather than the exception. I miss that. Instead, we get USA Today type short, incomplete articles in the written world and 5 minute interviews on TV. I detest the notion that people only have a MTV attention span – is it cause or effect?

But, I’m sorry, we’ll have to leave it there as that’s all the time we have – we’re up against a hard break and couldn’t possibly return to this subject after that…

If you held for example Chris Wallace to the same standard, you’d be foaming at the mouth by now.

He never should have said it. He never should have done it. A bad idea that is haunting him for obvious professional and personal reasons. That’s when he came out of the closet and stopped pretending to be something he’s not: a real journalist.

His nightly Obama lovefest is becoming quite tiresome as well.

Anderson not only insulted the tea party protesters, but he insulted and allowed his panelists to insult Hillary Clinton’s followers. He even insulted his own viewers!

Someone should remind him that without viewers he doesn’t have a show. CNN set him up with an email address, a blog, a Face Book account, and a Twitter account, but he doesn’t bother with any of that, he is much too important to take an interest in anything the viewers have to say, after all he is now a full blown elitist Vanderbilt celebrity who spends his time curling his tongue at celebrity DNA testing parties or flaunting his bulging biceps biking through the streets of NYC or exercising in the window of his favorite gym. The only reason he even Twitters is because Kelly Ripa encouraged him to do so.

I used to really like Anderson, but he isn’t the journalist he used to be or the journalist some of us thought he was. His defenders will make excuses for him, but the facts are the facts and now the ratings are reflecting those facts. I doubt there is anything he can do to regain his credibility.

I wonder how “Adonis” feels being beaten on a regular basis by Lunatic Olbermann, Crazy Nancy, and the Crypt Keeper?

Nielsen Cable Network Coverage Estimates (as of September, 2009)

CNN/HLN: 99.098 million HHs

CNBC: 96.78 million HHs

FNC: 96.26 million HHs

MSNBC: 92.64 million HHs

Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.tvbythenumbers.com

As you can see the numbers are pretty insignificant. Especially since CNN is in 100 million homes and they are the 4th place network.

MSNBC is a crap channel. CNN beats it in total viewers everyday. MSNBC For the 3rd quarter MSNBC finished way back at #30 in total day programming. It isn’t a very watched network. FNC on the other hand finished 4th among all networks. CNN finished #20.

I thought the purpose of HLN was so they could do the straight news, without the personality. That would be their straight news channel, and CNN would be their discussion. Seems they share that element… perhaps that’s the problem. Have CNN be exclusively one thing, and have HLN be the other. The mish-mash isn’t working.

Not to be rude, Tim… but you can do that research on your own. The stats are out there and pretty easily accessible. We’ve discussed it here a number of times.

Yes, FNC is in more homes than MSNBC… however, the difference isn’t overly significant. If you breakdown by percentages (watchers vs. availability), FNC remains dominant by a whole heck of a lot.

CNN is a very big journalistic entity. That one cable channel is just one slice of a very large pie. They run several channels and in different languages too. They have *the* world’s biggest international news channel. They are one of the biggest news websites in the world (if you combine FoxNews.com with MSNBC.com and triple the numbers, you’d get the same amount of hits as CNN.com).

I understand why they don’t want to refocus themselves into becoming another Fox News or MSNBC. It’s quite a testament to CNN’s mission, actually. They’d rather have straight news shows despite knowing that they’d attain higher ratings. If you want personality-driven shows, just flip to HLN.

CNN’s continued attempts to present them selves as more news than opinion is not working. Anyone who watches prime time and sees Carville, Begalla, Gerghan, Borger and other on air, know it’s not news, but spin. They need to admit it and just get better spinners or just fold up their tent completely.

Maybe the WH should declare war on CNN, then maybe their ratings would go up?