Fox News Channel on the Run

[DeepModem Mom]

TIME: Commentary
Fox on the Run
Thursday, Mar. 27, 2008
By JAMES PONIEWOZIK

....Fox hasn't gone soft, but from watching its coverage lately, I get a sense that the haven for conservative hosts, and viewers alienated by liberal news, needs to figure out its next act. Fox News is not simply a mouthpiece for the Bush White House: it rose with Bush after 2000 and 9/11, was played on TVs in his White House and reflected the same surety and flag-lapel-pin confidence in its tone and star-spangled look. It was not just a hit; it was the network of the moment.

Now, with two Democrats locked in what seems like a general-election campaign and lame-duck Bush fading from the headlines, it has to figure out how not to seem like yesterday's news. At times recently, the network has appeared uncertain about its focus. Its primary-night coverage has felt staid and listless. Sometimes it has gone tabloid with celebrity-news, true-crime and scandal stories (WEBSITES POSTING SEXY PICS LIFTED FROM FACEBOOK). At other times it has retreated into a kind of war-on-terrorism news-talgia, playing up threatening chatter and new missives from al-Qaeda leaders while its rivals are doing the election 24/7; flipping to Fox can feel like time-traveling to 2002.

Fox is still the top-rated news channel, but there are signs it's plateauing. Its ratings started to lag in 2006, and in February, CNN's prime time (boosted by several presidential debates) beat Fox among 25-to-54-year-olds for the first time since 2001. (CNN and TIME are owned by Time Warner.) Maybe even more galling, the network has lately faded in the ephemeral category of buzz. MSNBC - with far fewer viewers -- has been the political-media obsession of the 2008 primary, largely because of feuds between the Clinton campaign and the network for its perceived pro-Obama bias.

Ratings shmatings: if a Rupert Murdoch network cannot dominate the field of ticking off the Clintons, that has to sting....

***

As it wades through the fin de régime, Fox News will have one important asset: its loyal viewer base. But even for them, it will need to shake up its comfortable Bush-era routine, perhaps by cultivating new hosts, perhaps by taking a page from McCain and branding itself as the channel of maverick authenticity, not of establishment dogma. The viewers are Fox's to keep. It just has to figure out what's going to make them mad starting in 2009.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725955,00.html

[Joanne98]

1. And that means.. SELL News Corp stock!!!!!!!!!

[bunny planet]

2. They've already started. My sister and brother in law take in a steady diet of

Faux news watching, and they've already told me that Obama is an anti-semite who secretly supports Farrakan. I'm sure this is the meme over at Fox.

[tsuki]

3. The viewers are dying daily. It has the elderly demographic, somewhere

between McCain and Murdock.

[selador]

4. note that

CNN's relative increase in share has coincided with their listing rightwards, to an extent.

so, i am not sure i buy the analysis.

[tularetom]

5. The best thing for fixed noise's business

would be a hillary clinton presidency. You know they have hours of footage stored up of every clinton fuckup of the 90's. They got rich during the impeachment era by trashing the clintons 24/7. Why would they not want that to happen again.

Murdoch really has no ideology - he just wants to have more money than god. And another clinton in the white house is worth billions to him.

[Old and In the Way]

6. House of Saud and Kingdom Holdings are big investors in NewsCorp.

Remember that, fellow ditto-head lurkers, when you're watching the Fox propaganda take on the ME. You're getting the views that Saudi Arabia wants you to have.

[rasputin1952]

7. Years ago, and I'm not kidding, older people began watching

FOX because the "crawl" was larger and slower, easier to read...in the reality of things, that how FOX got it's "base".

[DeepModem Mom]

8. Interesting! I had an elderly relative who was pretty much confined to home...

and watched it just because it was more entertaining for someone who watched a lot of TV in the daytime -- I think for some of the reasons the article indicates people watch Fox, aside from politics.

[rasputin1952]

9. Most people like "background noise", be it a TV, radio...

whatever. I worked in a nursing hoome where FOX was the channel du jour for various reasons, but most residents didn't pay it much mind, until something "important" came up. Oddly, the further Right the channel moved, the less people listened to it; and the 24 cycle of inane rambings on things that were not newsworthy, like an earthquake or a hurricane, generally were just dusted away.

[Doctor_J]

10. A right-wing white House rag lamenting the decline of a right-wing White House

blow torch. Boo-fucking-hoo. All of these media types had better head for the hills before the revolution starts.