Are typical "RATINGS" underestimating the power of cable news?

[PretzelWarrior]

I was just thinking about this. See, if you want to catch what's going on by watching the networks, you only get brief windows of time like the morning shows "Today", "GMA"...and the nightly news shows on for about an hour window in the evening.

THat's great for people who's life operates that way...but it seems we live in more of an a la carte life where people pull news rather than have it PUSHED to them.

So...let's say ABC WorldNews tonight is 10 times the ratings share of whatever the typical cable news show that is on up against it. Great. but..the format of 24hr cable news is a bunch of hashing, hashing and rehashing of the same old thing. I suspect the actual viewing time for any one person in any given sitting is pretty short. So...the snapshot of viewers watching is going to be small at any given point or those shows.

But the combined effect of people tuning in throughout the day to Foxnews and the increasingly conservative-sounding CNN and MSNBC is that their brief bits of news are extremely shaded toward a slant that is nowhere near objective. They keep going back to the well, and in their busy life they see pretty much a fairly uniform message hitting them from "multiple" sources so they feel what they are seeing/hearing is objective news and objective fact.

This means the deliterious effect of cable news channels cannot be weighed by merely how many people are watching a given show.

ANyone? What are your thoughts?

This is all with the idea I have of pursuing VERIFIED VOTING and overhauled media (such as introducing some varient of the fairness doctrine back into law)

[KharmaTrain]

1. You Lost Me Totally

Are you trying to compare ratings of ABC to a cable network? I think you're trying to get at how people were brainwashed by Faux or CNNservative.

What are you trying to get at here? Maybe better way to say is if you think this regime will encourage "fairness" in the media, you just took place in a different election than I did.

[PretzelWarrior]

2. I'm low on sleep so it's likely I'm NOT making sense...but...

let me try again.

FIrst premise: cable news ratings are extremely lower than broadcast network news. Lots of reasons for that including how many households in metro areas can get broadcast news vs. how many people are hooked up to cable with those cable news offerings.

Second Premise: people extrapolate from that the idea that the network news shows MUST of necessity have a far wider reach and effect on people's perception of news.

Third Premise: the small audiences of the combined cable news netowrks at any given time seems to say very few people are watching and affected.

My thoughts on all of this: maybe as people are surfing on and off these channels, the net affect of all these people strolling in....reading some crawls at the bottom and hearing a couple of soundbites has bigger impact than we realize.

Just asking if that makes sense or if the cable channel Neilsen ratings are done in such a way to capture that kind of casual viewer or not.

[KharmaTrain]

3. Maybe There Was Something Put In The Water, Too

I guess Denial is a river that rages through DU.

Neilsen ratings only measures what people are watching, not what comes out of the tube or the content. Also, to get a full rating, the viewer has to be watching that show for at least 10 to 15 minutes (a full sample), not just scanning around.

People watch TV channels like they listen to radio stations like they buy their clothes or the car they drive...it's what they feel comfortable with, nothing more or less.

The media right now is the least of this party's problems.

We all could use a lot of rest around here.

Cheers!

[PretzelWarrior]

4. nope. I may be tired and a bit incoherent in my argumentation

but I was just throwing that out for subject matter. obviously, not an incredibly hot topic anyway so thanks for your participation.

I'm willing to concede that the cable news channels really do have the sucky small audience the ratings seem to suggest.

But what I won't do is concede the media is the least of our problems.

I've actually targeted a full scale push for media reform as part of my twin mission going foward. THe other is following through on all the questions surrounding e-voting and lack of accountability and transparency.

Obviously, there are things our party leadership and we ourselves at the foot soldier level will need to address about articulating our message clearly without abandoning our principles.

But many will be on that case, and I do feel these issues in the media need to be addressed. Not happy with the influence of the conservative slanted cable news but really all of the corporate owned media is shitty. Many of them openly admitted they didn't report the correct story on Swiftboat vets until way late and many still have not admitted what NYTimes and WashingtonPost did...that they all were too willing to go along unquestioningly with Bush WH lines on Iraq in the runup to war.

[KharmaTrain]

8. What's The Message?

Shooting the messenger doesn't destroy the message. When I see the "let's get the media" posts here, I don't see what it's going to be replaced with and whose going to do the replacing.

Do I think the cable networks skew right wing with most of their programming? Check back on my posts from the past 3 years on here and you'll see a running discussion of this that no one appears to want to really discuss since it's so easier blaming the networks and others rather than looking at the marketplace.

Unfortunately the election now verifies there's a very strong and unified right wing in this country...and one that is more attentive, spends more money and is in power now. The meme already has been stoked that the "left" is not organized and a lucrative market and are a bunch of whiners on top of it.

Kerry's problem is he tried to be everything to every Democrat. And, sadly, he was the best and most acceptable candidate this party had. He and his campaign got skunked in the worst way...and a reason so many of us are stinging from it despite our hard work...and I honestly don't see either a candidate or leadership developing here that is offering a positive message right now.

The public has spoken, the marketplace has taken notice. Principals be damned, we're talking business here. Welcome to the new age of total greed and selfishness.

[PretzelWarrior]

9. well, I don think you overdramatize. there's a market for ideas.

yes, it is a duopoly right now...but most businesses don't shut down if they have 50% market share.

What I am proposing is not that you get rid of the entrenched media sources such as broadcast network news and cable news and radio networks.

I am saying we have to figure a way to REVERSE THE TREND and get more government regulation over the people's airwaves--not less

and we need to mobilize in a massive and sustained way against the status quo with the media. somehow, we have to figure out the barriers to entry into the media market...get around them..and get our market niche serviced with a bang-up product that has potential for growth.

so...it is a multipronged effort. increase media diversity. increase control over how license holders are to operate in the public good, and focused consumer energy on the existing media owners to point out EXACTLY what we find wrong with their coverage and why.

[KharmaTrain]

10. I Wish You Well

I'm exhausted...since for three years I tried to network with people here using my contacts and 30 years of "media experience". I'll spare you the details of what I encountered and how egos and "ideology" got in the way of serious networking and coordination. It's only going to get worse now. Any concept of a counter liberal media took a major hit in this election and soon it will be felt.

The concept of 48% of us not agreeing with this regime is true, but its for different reasons. Right now, I'm seeing endless posts where you can see what the poster's prime agenda is and that it's THAT issue that wasn't paid enough attention to or it was someone else's fault. You're asking for mobilization in this atmosphere? I wish for civility. I wish for minds to open, to people to take a long needed step back here and take off the rose-colored glasses and see a real world that isn't pretty and isn't fair.

The concept of the media is a complicated one covering various different entities...cable is not newspaper is not over-the-air TV isn't radio isn't internet radio isn't satellite TV and so on. There's no one broad stroke that is applied here and to "reshape the media" is way beyond the financial and marketing reach of many, many I see here.

Now I'm gonna try one last time to attempt a dialogue here. I suspect I'll get frustrated again and just sit back and watch the bloodletting here.

[On the Road]

5. I Think You are On to Something

in that Nielsen does not measures the number of sets tuned to a station, and not the quality of viewing. The effect of channel surfing could be underestimated, especially since channel surfers tend to hit all channels more or less equally.

There's also another factor. It may be that shows tuned to the large networks are also more likely to be ignored -- to have the shows on in the living room while no one's watching. But that's speculation, too.

[RafterMan]

6. I think it's underestimated, but not necessarily in that way

News and opinion are transmitted by percolation. The people who watch cable news tend to be the opinion leader in their group. They use the arguments that pundits have given them to convince those around them, who in turn reuse the arguments in their own discussions.

Pretty soon, everybody knows Al Gore says he invented the internet.

I think this is how it works, and I think the right wing pundits understand that this is how it works, and develop the arguments they're going to give for just this purpose. Come up with a good line that will make the guy at the watercooler feel particularly witty when he tries it out himself and you can bet he'll try it out himself -- perhaps even imagining it to be his own reasoning.

[PretzelWarrior]

7. well now. you just taught me something. I agree with you.

and that point makes the whole ratings aspect an irrelevant discussion. It is the people who are Newsphiles who will tune in and make sure they get the latest...then they repeat to their wide circle of coworkers, etc. Yep. that makes a lot of sense.

Which is why it's been so important to have our own areas for percolating easily digested points like from here at DU but more importantly in edited magazines such as the Nation, Harpers...and now Air America.