And BTW, Fox News' ratings have not "spiked"
November 03, 2009 10:22 am ET by Eric Boehlert
No matter what Bill O'Reilly, Mike Allen, Kathleen Parker, Clarence Page, Michael Wolff, David Gergen, Ruth Marcus and an army of media pundits insist, the cold facts are clear: in the two weeks following its public dispute with the White House. Fox News' ratings did not "soar" or "spike" or "go through the roof."
Instead, the ratings flat-lined.
As I note in my column:
The chattering class wanted to claim Fox News' ratings were going up, up, up. They wanted to suggest that the White House critique had massively backfired. But now we know that's fiction. So when are the pundits going to start posting their retractions?
Full column here.
See, what they meant was, not that they would get more viewers themselves, but that FOX overall would have a wider audience. Other news outlets began talking more about FOX during their shows, because of course the White House got involved, and the White House is always newsworthy. (It's just FOX's opinion that the reason for this is that the MSM have to fawn over Obama, but we can ignore that for now.) So, MSNBC, CNN, and the big three devoted airtime to the FOX Propaganda/White House 'feud' (a loaded choice of words on FOX's part, and one echoed most consistently by the 'liberal' media), along with clips of both sides, with a strong tendency to favor clips from FOX demonstrating their poutrage at such treatment at the hands of a sitting President.
But it's the clips that spiked their ratings! It's just that data gathering on TV viewing habits aren't sophisticated enough to show it! See, people tuned in to MSNBC, but they were watching clips from FOX! Because MSNBC was talking about FOX and playing clips from FOX's broadcast day! So, really, they weren't watching MSNBC, but rather FOX Propaganda!
Ta-da! Ratings spike. Game, set, and match. Of course, it's just more lies, but since when has that ever stopped FOX Propaganda before?!
Fox, like a nerdy bore that has to come to all the parties, will say or do anything to justified their "popularity," i.e. "we must be popular, look at our data." Doesn't matter how they parse it, show the ratings, it all comes down for their wish to be popular.
It's kinda sad, actually.