NYT/AP: Slumping Fox News to Mark Its 10th Year

[DeepModem Mom]

Slumping Fox News to Mark Its 10th Year
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 1, 2006

NEW YORK (AP) -- Fox News Channel will mark its 10th anniversary this week in an unusual position: knocked back on its heels.

The network is in the midst of its first-ever ratings slump. Cable news' most stable lineup is being juggled. And the blow-up over President Clinton's interview with Chris Wallace suggests that Democrats are attacking Fox because they perceive the same vulnerability in the network as they do in the Bush administration....

***

Loved by some, loathed by others, Fox News Channel has been the biggest success in the cable industry and profoundly changed television news....Opinionated talk is now a staple on the TV dial, with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, Lou Dobbs on CNN and Nancy Grace on CNN Headline News....Before Fox, many in the media scoffed at the notion of a liberal bias and figured only a handful of people really believed that, said Erik Sorenson, former MSNBC president.

''Fox proved it's a much larger group than anybody realized,'' he said....The very idea that Rush Limbaugh would appear on a ''CBS Evening News'' segment called ''Free Speech,'' heavily promoted on Katie Couric's first night as anchor, would have been unfathomable a decade ago, Sorenson said....(F)ormer CBS News President Andrew Heyward suggested industry sensitivity to Fox's popularity, coupled with shock after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, combined to dampen aggressiveness in questioning the government's assumptions leading up to the Iraq war....

***

Less attention has been paid to the look of Fox News. During its peak, it appeared more colorful, more graphically innovative and more urgent....But the years of explosive growth have ended at Fox. Viewership over the first eight months of the year was down 5 percent compared to 2005, with a steeper 13 percent decline in prime-time, according to Nielsen Media Research. For 12 straight months, Fox's prime-time audience has been smaller than the year before. Meanwhile, CNN viewership inched up 5 percent this year through August. On a typical day this year, Fox's audience is 845,000 while CNN's is 466,000....

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-TV-Fox-Anniversary.html?_r=1&oref=login

[Hawkeye-X]

1. Hope the trends continue

badly for Faux News and they have to eventually shut down.

Hawkeye-X

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. Don't count on it

There are powerful interests who would like to see it keep going.

[Javaman]

22. Que the Death Star music...nt

[Bluzmann57]

2. Olbermann, Dobbs, and...Nancy Grace?

Olbermann and Dobbs are at least serious reporters who, while people may disagree with them, at least present backed up facts. Nancy Grace nags people to death. She is in no way a legitimate reporter. And I hope Faux's ratings keep on falling, as far down as possible. Maybe then they'll get the idea that we are sick of the shit they spew daily.

[donco6]

3. How can anyone watch that woman?

Just the look on her snarly face makes me wanna hurl.

[CatholicEdHead]

4. People are getting sick of the format

You can only stay in a froth for so long. People are picking up on how shrill it is.

[VegasWolf]

5. FOX just needs to introduce Rush Limbaugh into its mix. Limbaugh has

been stirring up people forever it seems and the fools keep buying it.

[RamboLiberal]

6. Nah, Limpballs is old news - they need to give Ann the Mann

Coulter her own show. :sarcasm:

Her problem is she couldn't last 15 minutes with her inane views.

[davidinalameda]

8. Michael Savage survived for a few shows

Ann could do a season, then end up on the Surreal Life on VH1

[Art_from_Ark]

21. Pigboy did have his own TV show at one time

Didn't last long, though

[ovidsen]

9. Sagging ratings hasn't lowered Faux's greed!

FNC literally bought it's way onto cable systems 10 years ago by offering then up to $11 a subscriber to put them on the menu. Now that contracts are expiring, Faux wants a raise. A BIG raise.

With Fox's 10th anniversary next week, a series of 10-year contracts with providers will begin expiring. Fox says the systems pay roughly 25 cents per subscriber each month to carry its programming. Given the network's success in the ratings, Fox is asking that these fees jump to $1.
http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060929/LIFE/609290312/1005

This would be more than any other non-sports channel.

ESPN: $2.91
TNT: 89 cents
Disney Channel: 79 cents
USA: 47 cents
CNN: 44 cents
Nickelodeon: 41 cents
TBS: 39 cents
Fox News Channel: 27 cents
Discovery: 27 cents
Lifetime: 23 cents
* Average monthly license fee per subscriber; figures are for 2006.
Source: Kagan Research

Maybe their greed will get the best of them?

[CatholicEdHead]

14. Part of it is a bargaining chip, set the initial request high and bargain

and part of it is that Faux News is a News Corp entity that is a capital leverage towards other parts of News Corp, I think when they bought Direct TV. They need the revenues, justified or not to try to say afloat at News Corp.

[ovidsen]

18. Still too greedy, IMO

Some of the big cable boys (Cox, Time-Warner and Cablevision) do NOT LIKE it when someone tries to push them around. They could tell Faux to take their ball and go home. I dont know about Cox, but both Time Warner and Cablevision have threatened to drop channels if they think negotiations aren't going their way, and have (briefly) done just that. And I think there are some Time Warner systems that still don't carry Faux even today, possible fallout from lawsuits filed by Faux in the late 1990s against the cable systems Time Warner operates in NYC.

As they say... stay tuned!

edited for usual typos

[Akoto]

10. I'm not surprised, what with Glenn Beck and all.

I absolutely cannot stand that guy. Quote from his latest commercial: "Lets stop paying attention to Iraq and start paying attention to Iran." Yeah, I'm sure you'd love that.

He combines Nancy Grace's "righteous" disregard for reality with O'Reilly's general bullcrap idiocy.

[0007]

11. Loved by the mindless and loathed by the majority FAUX is

headed for the trash can.

[lovuian]

12. Propoganda channel lost its credibility

now its of no use...

[damntexdem]

13. That ratty old fox needs a mercy killing.

But any kind of killing will do.

Meanwhile, we in Dallas have lost our AAR outlet --they can't let any alternative media survive in North Texas, after all.

[antonialee839]

15. People will only watch slop for so long....

[AlCzervik]

16. Even giant train wrecks are boring to watch after a while and thats what

Faux pretty much is, a giant train wreck.

[MattP]

17. Time-Warner

Time-warner will take them right off the air, in my area they took thier own network off the air the CW which they half own over a contract dispute and they won't put on the NFL network or Starz on demand or Starz HD on air over money disputes.

[rodeodance]

19. lbermann's growing popularity --

.......Some of the bigger stories of the past year, such as Hurricane Katrina and the wars in the Middle East, played better to the newsgathering strengths of CNN, Heyward said.

Olbermann's growing popularity -- and growing partisanship -- along with the response to Clinton's ''Fox News Sunday'' interview also indicate that Fox's foes have less fear about taking the network on.

Fox has recently made a handful of lineup changes -- most notably yanking E.D. Hill from the popular ''Fox & Friends'' and giving her a daytime anchor slot, replacing her on the morning show with Gretchen Carlson. Ailes said FNC is trying to add some fresh faces to its contributors.

[gulliver]

20. That makes Fox and CNN about equal in terms of ...

... total brainpower devoted to viewing them.

Seriously, no one serious can take Fox News seriously. It caters to imbeciles.