Glenn Beck has lost 1/3 of its TV audience since January
April 28, 2010 8:31 am ET by Eric Boehlert
Should we blame it on the Massa Moment?
Will that Hindenburg performance soon be seen as the turning point for Glenn Beck: the pivotal moment when the Fox News show began to permanently leak viewers?
Who can forget the March day that will live in cable news infamy, when Beck invited embattled Democratic Congressman Eric Massa onto his show, for an entire hour, to blow the whistle on Democratic Party corruption? Or so Beck thought. Instead, Massa went on and on about tickle fights, and Beck became a laughing stock -- the butt of endless Geraldo-opens-Al-Capone's-vault jokes.
Prior to the Massa Moment, Glenn Beck was averaging 2.6 million viewers each week, and the show was still flying high. And in the short term, the wildly hyped Massa episode produced ratings gold, generating 3.4 million viewers that night, thank you very much. Long-term though, the effects have proven to be disastrous.
As I noted two weeks ago, Glenn Beck's ratings are down this spring. Now it's clear those declines are accelerating and there are no signs of a rebound. So what does that mean for Beck, Fox News, and the Tea Party movement?
First, the latest Nielsen low: Glenn Beck just posted another ratings low for this year. The new mark was set last Thursday when the show attracted 1.82 million viewers. The host's previous, non-vacation low for 2010 had been 1.97 million viewers. That low-ebb mark was set on April 9.
Based on the Nielsen numbers, here's a look at Beck's average daily viewership over the last five weeks. (Any weekend re-broadcasts, as well as weekday shows when Beck was on vacation, are not included in the tabulation.)
(The temporary spike shown above represents the day after health care reform passed in the Congress.)
Let's put Beck's ratings into context. Yes, in the world of cable news, his numbers are impressive, and virtually any host would be happy to have them. But look how far Glenn Beck has fallen recently. In late January and into February, the program was averaging 3 million viewers each week. And late last year, the show spent month after month flirting with that figure. Today, the viewership is trending around 2 million (Last week it was exactly 2.01 million viewers.) -- which means that in a span of just three months, Glenn Beck has lost nearly one-third of its television audience.
My take? Those missing one million aren't coming back. Not permanently anyway. Meaning, this is not a temporary hiccup for Glenn Beck, and the host is not likely to see a V-shaped recovery in terms of the show's ratings. Beck mania seems to have peaked. At least on TV. Will the show enjoy occasional audience spikes? Sure. But I doubt they will be sustainable.
And that has to be sending up all kinds of red flags inside Fox News, which already struggles to find any big-name advertisers to fill out the commercials on the controversial show. Keep in mind, there are more than 200 companies that have gone on the record as saying they will not buy ad time on Glenn Beck's show. Applebee's? No. AT&T? No. Bank of America? No. Best Buy, Campbell Soup, CVS, Ditech, Farmers Insurance Group, GEICO, General Mills, Johnson & Johnson, Lowe's, Nutrisystem, Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance, RadioShack, Sprint, State Farm Insurance, The UPS Store, Travelers Insurance, Verizon Wireless, Vonage, or Wal-Mart?
No.
Corporate America (aka the beloved free marketplace) wants nothing to do with Beck. (Sort of like the NFL wanted nothing to do with Rush Limbaugh last year.) Today, there are less than a handful of nationally recognized advertisers who appear willing to purchase air time on Glenn Beck. Think about the deep, deep discounts Fox News likely has to offer the remaining advertisers in order to get them to come aboard. (And the show is supposed to be a hit.) Now add to that equation the fact that Glenn Beck has lost 1/3 of its audience since January, and you can see where this is heading for Fox News.
How soft are Beck's current ratings? He's now posting the type of numbers that his show used to get when he was on vacation and somebody less famous stood in for him, like when he took a few days off in late March and his show averaged 1.9 million viewers. Beck's been back from his March vacation for weeks now, but his ratings are roughly the same as when he wasn't even there.
What's so amazing about the stampede away from Beck's show is that the political landscape has not changed during that time. In fact, according to press accounts, the Tea Party movement that Beck is so closely aligned with is supposedly in the midst of a surge in momentum and enthusiasm. So why is Glenn Beck losing viewers? It's odd because Beck's nemesis, President Barack Obama, is still in office and still doing his best, in the Beck worldview, to ruin America from within. Democrats are still in charge of Congress and still, in the Beck worldview, ripping up the Constitution. It's not like the evil Democratic threat is gone. Beck's bogeymen remain in place. It's just that one-third of his audience has lost interest and has checked out.
What's wrong with Glenn Beck? And why are viewers fleeing the show? Obviously, I'm not the target demo, but I will now admit that there were times last fall and in early winter when Beck's show did have a kind of demented, "Oh wow" factor to it, and I tuned in regularly just to see what he'd say and do next. The program did, at times, make for compelling television.
But today, making it through one of his insufferable, redundant shows feels like sitting through detention. The wow factor is long gone. Whatever originality the show once had has been replaced with a suffocating sense of sameness as Beck's expanding ego seems to have completely taken control of the operation.
Which brings us back to the Massa Moment, and the absurd broadcasting notion that Beck could generate interesting television for an entire hour while interviewing a congressman he barely even knew. i.e. recipe for disaster. And yes, Beck seems to know that the lecture-like shows he now produces, complete with unreadable chalkboards, don't make for good TV. Last week he jokingly conceded, "This is the worst television ever done. We're doing it every day, congratulations."
Beck appears to be trapped in something of a programming box. If he continues to just keep saying the same thing day after day, more viewers are likely to flee. If he goes long and risks his shows on ridiculous Massa-like interviews, more viewers are likely to be turned off.
But who knows, maybe it wasn't the Massa flame-out that drove viewers away. Instead, maybe it was Beck's hateful and irresponsible attack on Christianity, and specifically Catholicism, in which he urged parishioners to leave their church -- during the Easter season -- if their church mentioned "social justice," which Beck announced was akin to communism and Nazism. Maybe that's what opened the Fox News floodgates, as offended viewers forced their way out.
Or maybe it's been a combination of Beck's incessant whining, married with his delusional conspiracies and his hateful rhetoric that simply do not appeal to people outside of his most hardcore, fanatical, Obama-hating followers. And maybe in the end that group only numbers 1-1.5 million viewers.
Or maybe the sagging numbers represent the let-down that came after Beck's flock watched health care reform pass; the same reform that the GOP Noise Machine had pronounced dead all winter long and that had no chance of passing. (Oops!)
Oh, and did I mention Beck's runaway ego? As Media Matters' Ben Dimiero wrote last week:
Capping a week in which he attempted to explain the "plan" he "think[s]" God wants him to "articulate," Glenn Beck informed listeners of his radio show today that "an individual" at the Vatican purportedly told him that we are entering a "period of great darkness" and that Beck himself was "wildly important" to the upcoming struggle.
Okaaay.
Whatever the possible causes of the exodus, Nielsen numbers don't lie about the concrete effects.
Jed Lewison recently pointed out at DailyKos that Beck's April ratings this year are actually slightly lower than April 2009, when the whole Tea Party movement was just getting off the ground [emphasis original]:
From April 1 to April 14, 2009 (the two weeks immediately preceding tea party 2009) the Glenn Beck show averaged 2.23 million viewers.
Meanwhile, from April 1 to April 14, 2010 his show averaged 2.15 million viewers.
[...]
That's not a dramatic decline, and Beck clearly still has a loyal audience. But his audience is not growing.
That's right, year-to-date, Beck's audience is not growing. Despite all the media attention, the cover stories on Beck and the endless reporting of the Tea Party movement he supposedly leads, over the last 12 months, Beck has not grown his TV audience. Well, he grew it, and then lost it again, while managing to lose 200 advertisers as well.
In fact, if the precipitous Glenn Beck ratings trend continues, the show will soon be regularly attracting many, many fewer viewers than it did 12 months ago -- an astonishing turn of events for a signature show that's supposed to be at the forefront of a political revolution.
UPDATED: New April Nielsen numbers confirm Beck's rating decline.
Fox News Ratings Dive: American IQ Rebounds
Do that know how to GOOGLE? Apparently not!
... and teachers, union workers, college students, nurses, African Americans, Hispanics, Germans, the Chinese, Europeans, Canadians, historians, intellectuals, and those with reason, Mormons, atheists, agnostics, environmentalists, evolutionists, anyone using government assistance, the poor, the sick, or the unfortunate, 200 advertisers, politicians, journalists, public institutions, those who believe in social justice, progressives, conservatives, and of course... us liberals.
Believe it or not... he still has his pot of more than two million to feed his greed from.
That said, the viewers will likely be back in the Fall for the election. You cannot sustain high ratings from elections forever. I think it is odd that Fox was able to do it for more than a year after the last one.
No problem - except that he omitted the fact that Rockefeller was a world-famous capitalist and that Deco was a prevailing art form of the time!!! (This would have been a 2 second Google search, but typically it didn't fit his rant - and why wouldn't his audience know that anyway).
Unlike progressives who question everything, the ditto heads simply accept everything as long as the lecture is based on hate and he's talking to a group that doesn't want to think anyway.
The 5:00 pm slot is very important to cable outlets. If you can draw an audience at 5:00 pm, you are more likely to keep those viewers for the primetime line-up. So, Beck WAS drawing 5-6 times the number of viewers previously averaged in this slot. Even still he IS averaging 3-4 times the previous averages.
This is why MMFA is not seen as credible in many circles. You are dishonest to your members and your readers. As long as Glenn Beck is bringing viewers in numbers many times over what the previous programming was bringing, he will still be relevant, and Fox won't have a "Glenn Beck problem".
Beck brought in viewers for a while, but they are leaving . . . his ridiculously outrageous and dishonest programing and his attacks on core Christian beliefs are taking a toll. I figure he's got another couple of months, tops, before he's no longer with Fox.
Looks like you're one of the folks Beck calls idiots . . . those who believe his ridiculous schtick.
He hasn't alienated Christians. Just because MMFA tells you that doesn't make it true. Believe it or not, not every Christians believes the government's role is to promote social justice. Actually, many Christians believe it is our role as a society to promote fairness, and it is the role of government to promote the rule of law. As in, with a blindfold on. He has not attacked core Christian beliefs. Please, tell me which ones he has attacked.
-"Looks like you're one of the folks Beck calls idiots . . . those who believe his ridiculous schtick."
Hmmm, so I make a pretty logical and legitimate argument about why Fox doesn't have a problem in Beck, and now I believe his schtick???? Look, when you learn to operate outside of purely fallacious arguments maybe you will make a dent in the point I was making.
"...maybe it was Beck's hateful and irresponsible attack on Christianity, and specifically Catholicism, in which he urged parishioners to leave their church -- during the Easter season -- if their church mentioned "social justice," which Beck announced was akin to communism and Nazism. Maybe that's what opened the Fox News floodgates, as offended viewers forced their way out."
The quote is from the article above.
Alas, the current progressive tax system is a hindrance to charity and community care. So, I guess my point is somewhate moot until we move to a more consumption based tax system.
What major industrial nation in the 21 century relies on communal charity to take of it's citizens? What nation in modern times whose economy is not agrarian has ever based their programs on communal charity? even in Oliver Twist times which Charles Dickens so eloquently wrote about has that EVER been an effective way of dealing with poverty and eliminating it's root causes. What you propose is not new it's been tried and we have rightly moved away from solely that type of system. On the other hand we were discussing Glenn Beck telling his viewers that they should run away from.leave their churches that propose or practice social justice as a reason why he is loosing viewers.
1. Who does worse under the proposed "Fair Tax" plan. Considering the plan is supposed to be revenue neutral, obviously not everybody can benefit from the proposal, but that is the way the authors present the argument. Alarm bells should go off in your head at that if you are as logical as you seem.
2. How is making the tax inclusive instead of the normal exclusive not an attempt to be deceptive? The only advantage seems to be the ability to publicize a much lower rate (the inclusive percentage) than the effective rate.
3. Considering taxes discourage behavior that is taxed in general, wouldn't taxing consumption be deadly to an economy like our own that is driven almost entirely by consumption? How can anybody argue that consumption would not go down if it was taxed? Do we really want to cool down our economic engine like that?
We need an honest and transparent debate about the "Fair Tax" and a close look at the potential and likely consequences.
the examples you cited are natural disasters. if people gave the same amount all the time regardless of anything extraordinary happening then i would agree with you.
I consider myself a libertarian. I never said that the CRA "caused" the meltdown. I said it contributed. Are you denying this point? Are you saying that people getting houses they shouldn't wasn't a contributing factor, and that the CRA didn't contribute to those people getting those houses? I'm asking seriously not rhetorically.
-"...Beck telling them to leave THEIR CHURCHES if they found them practicing social justice a step further than the government I would think and one pointed out in the article you distorted"-
What did I distort? Beck never said you should leave your church if it "PRACTICES" social justice. That is a "distortion". His point was to churches getting in bed with government and politicians to promote social justice through legislation rather than social justice through community and private charity. You are blending 2 things that aren't the same thing. As someone who is trying to really find the truth no matter which side it comes from, I think we need to discern between the different sources of "social justice".
-"As far as your fannie and freddie distortion I'll leave for another time."
I will only say this. Fannie and Freddie contributed to the crisis. They bought and sold bad mortgages called "mortgage backed securities". They knew they were bad mortgages. They knew they were adjustable rate and other forms. They knew a time would come when the rates would move higher than was affordable for the lendee. They pushed these securities into the securities market, and bought many of the bad mortgages. Why? Because the more mortgages they held, the more their lenders and executives were paid. It was a shell game that they played along side other institutions. Do you debate that this went on and that it didn't contribute to the problem?
-"On another note Beck supported the TARP and the bailouts before he was against them"-
Correct. He has since said he was wrong. What more can he do? Why do you want to hang on this point? There were many Americans who supported the thought of the bailouts and TARP because of the fear mongering perpetrated by our government. Once they heard the details and looked at reality, they changed their minds.
-"I have yet to hear him rant against the military industrial complex."
Here you go. http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201004150069
Here is a transcript. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,591157,00.html
"...They've specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie's and Freddie's financial problems.
Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.
Subprime lending offered high-cost loans to the weakest borrowers during the housing boom that lasted from 2001 to 2007. Subprime lending was at its height from 2004 to 2006.
Federal Reserve Board data show that:
More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.
Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.
Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.
The "turmoil in financial markets clearly was triggered by a dramatic weakening of underwriting standards for U.S. subprime mortgages, beginning in late 2004 andextending into 2007," the President's Working Group on Financial Markets reported Friday..."
Fannie, the Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., don't lend money, to minorities or anyone else, however. They purchase loans from the private lenders who actually underwrite the loans.
It's a process called securitization, and by passing on the loans, banks have more capital on hand so they can lend even more.
This much is true. In an effort to promote affordable home ownership for minorities and rural whites, the Department of Housing and Urban Development set targets for Fannie and Freddie in 1992 to purchase low-income loans for sale into the secondary market that eventually reached this number: 52 percent of loans given to low-to moderate-income families.
To be sure, encouraging lower-income Americans to become homeowners gave unsophisticated borrowers and unscrupulous lenders and mortgage brokers more chances to turn dreams of homeownership in nightmares.
But these loans, and those to low- and moderate-income families represent a small portion of overall lending. And at the height of the housing boom in 2005 and 2006, Republicans and their party's standard bearer, President Bush, didn't criticize any sort of lending, frequently boasting that they were presiding over the highest-ever rates of U.S. homeownership.
Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance, a specialty publication. One reason is that Fannie and Freddie were subject to tougher standards than many of the unregulated players in the private sector who weakened lending standards, most of whom have gone bankrupt or are now in deep trouble.
During those same explosive three years, private investment banks — not Fannie and Freddie — dominated the mortgage loans that were packaged and sold into the secondary mortgage market. In 2005 and 2006, the private sector securitized almost two thirds of all U.S. mortgages, supplanting Fannie and Freddie, according to a number of specialty publications that track this data..."
"...Fannie and Freddie, however, didn't pressure lenders to sell them more loans; they struggled to keep pace with their private sector competitors. In fact, their regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, imposed new restrictions in 2006 that led to Fannie and Freddie losing even more market share in the booming subprime market.
What's more, only commercial banks and thrifts must follow CRA rules. The investment banks don't, nor did the now-bankrupt non-bank lenders such as New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest that underwrote most of the subprime loans.
These private non-bank lenders enjoyed a regulatory gap, allowing them to be regulated by 50 different state banking supervisors instead of the federal government. And mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans.
In a speech last March, Janet Yellen, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, debunked the notion that the push for affordable housing created today's problems.
"Most of the loans made by depository institutions examined under the CRA have not been higher-priced loans," she said. "The CRA has increased the volume of responsible lending to low- and moderate-income households."
In a book on the sub-prime lending collapse published in June 2007, the late Federal Reserve Governor Ed Gramlich wrote that only one-third of all CRA loans had interest rates high enough to be considered sub-prime and that to the pleasant surprise of commercial banks there were low default rates. Banks that participated in CRA lending had found, he wrote, "that this new lending is good business."
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/10/12/53802/private-sector-loans-not-fannie.html#ixzz0mPcMzjkt
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/10/12/53802/private-sector-loans-not-fannie.html#ixzz0mPZnaA3V
http://mediamatters.org/research/201003120055
pot meet kettle
Of course, it's not supposed to work that way in the NEWS business, but that's got nothing to do with Beck.
In a country of 300 million-plus, that says all you need to know about whether the attention paid to Beck -- and by extension his influence -- is waaaaaay beyond his actual reach.
Like a brat craving attention, Beck should be ignored ... if so eventually he will go away.
-Pure moronic Gold. Ty Glenn. You just made my day
5PM – P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
Glenn Beck – 2,456,000 viewers (745,000) (1,223,000)
Situation Room—617,000 viewers (155,000) (235,000)
Hardball w/ C. Matthews – 546,000 viewers (150,000) (238,000)
Fast Money – 208,000 viewers (a scratch w/50,000) (75,000)
Showbiz Tonight —220,000 viewers (64,000) (86,000)
Face it, you're "cause" of trying to take down Beck isn't working. Neither will the one your working on with Hannity.
9 PM – P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
Hannity – 1,899,000 viewers (526,000) (912,000)
Larry King Live —704,000 viewers (235,000) (346,000)
Rachel Maddow Show —1,076,000 viewers (295,000) (514,000)
The Apprentice — 207,000 viewers (112,000) (106,000)
Joy Behar – 717,000 viewers (249,000) (332,000)
Just so I won't make you sick, I won't even post O'Reilly's numbers. Wait, yes I will.
8PM – P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
The O’Reilly Factor – 2,978,000 viewers (731,000) (1,345,000)
Campbell Brown – 452,000 viewers (150,000) (210,000)
Countdown w/ K. Olbermann – 1,085,000 viewers (296,000) (575,000)
The Apprentice- 181,000 viewers (99,000) (96,000)
Nancy Grace – 713,000 viewers (279,000) (362,000)
Madow and Shultz lose 1/3 of their audience..........120 to now 80 listeners
Beck loses 1/3 of his audience......... 3.6 million to 2.7 listeners
Guess the leftys no longer need get their shorts in knot about November!
Why then are you and boehlert getting your shorts all knotted up? If less are viewing or care then the leftys should be excited about November 2010! Right?!? :>
Ruining the economy?
Sucking at war?
Pathological lying?
Ruining the economy? - moron - the crash started in 2007 -
Sucking at war? - the unfunded war that Bush started by lying to the world?
Pathological lying? - Weapons of Mass Deception? or no, Destruction
Were you unconscious from 2001 - 2008? Bush destroyed the country - 911, Katrina, water boarding, war criminal status in the world, the crash of 2007, undermining the housing market, exporting jobs, no follow through on immigration reform..
Better yet - Name DETAILS of ANY accomplishments of the drunk/coke-head you adore.
It will be very difficult for him to demand more money when his contract is up. Bossman Rupert will not pay Beck a large sum of money with low ratings. It's not going to happen and Beck knows it.
If Beck was smart, he would move on.
"Relatively speaking, Beck still has the kind of ratings that would turn just about everyone on cable TV green with envy. And just to put his numbers in fair context, year over year, everyone in cable is currently down. Some quite a lot. Just to give you a sense. Beck is down 4% from last April, Bill O’Reilly is down 3%, Keith Olbermann is down 28%, Campbell Brown is down 39%, Sean Hannity is down 17%, Rachel Maddow is down 8%. Also, it’s probably worth noting that viewer numbers traditionally drop in April. So there’s that."
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/is-glenn-beck-losing-his-audience-or-merely-his-mojo/