Why are Biden's poll numbers so low?

ridski said:

Too many people watching cable news in general, IMO.

100% correct, Ridski! Between two years+ of Covid fears, lockdowns, remote work and learning,  and the tropical heat wave, there has been way too much TV watching! 

But, why are folks watching conservative cable news programming dramatically more? Is it content, or delivery at play? What say you?

mtierney said:

But, why are folks watching conservative cable news programming dramatically more? Is it content, or delivery at play?

Folks who watch cable news watch conservative programming more. The pool — a group of people who are doing what you think people should be doing less of — is at play.

Why are uninformed, illogically angry people watching conservative cable news more? It's a mystery, all right.

My experience with Fox, which was often playing at my sister's house, is that it can push you to feel anxious -- and therefore inclined to stay tuned for updates -- just by repetition and tone of voice, even from across the hall, with the door closed.  Awful stuff, imo, and way too pervasive, and boy have they been raking it in year after year, at the expense of our country.

mtierney said:

ridski said:

Too many people watching cable news in general, IMO.

100% correct, Ridski! Between two years+ of Covid fears, lockdowns, remote work and learning,  and the tropical heat wave, there has been way too much TV watching! 

But, why are folks watching conservative cable news programming dramatically more? Is it content, or delivery at play? What say you?

Well, let's look at some pandemic-viewing figures from 2020.

• CNN grew its viewership by 83% year-over-year. MSNBC was up 23% from 2019, and Fox News saw a 43% viewership increase
• Fox News (3.6 million primetime viewers), MSNBC (2.1 million), and CNN (1.8 million) ended up as 2020’s most watched cable networks overall
• 16% of Americans cite cable news as their primary source of political information, 18% get their news from social media
• 34% of people aged 55–64 and 35% aged 65 and over said they regularly watched cable news. For comparison, 27% of people in the 45–54 age group, 24% in the 30–44 bracket, and just 15% of those aged 18–29 watch cable news broadcasts every day. 42% of Gen-Zers and young millennials (18–29) never watch cable news
• BBC News is the most trusted news channel in the US (56% of Americans find it trustworthy)
• Fox News has been the most watched cable news channel for the last 19 years
• White Americans account for 74% of Fox News' total viewership
• 52% of CNN's viewers are white

https://letter.ly/cable-news-viewership-statistics/

It's hard to draw conclusions from stats like this. Millions of Americans watch "Reality" TV, too, and I don't get the appeal of either to be honest. Just like Reality TV, cable news' own output often feeds the next day's news cycle with some talking head saying something outrageous or dumb or both.

Fox has actually been bleeding viewers to more extreme right-wing channels like OANN, Newsmax, The Blaze and America's Voice, especially after Fox was the first network to call the presidency for Biden, and only a few hosts continued with the Big Lie narrative.

Perhaps, rather than trying to determine why so many people are watching conservative cable news programming, it would be more interesting to find out what would happen if it went away?

ridski said:

Well, let's look at some pandemic-viewing figures from 2020.

• CNN grew its viewership by 83% year-over-year. MSNBC was up 23% from 2019, and Fox News saw a 43% viewership increase
• Fox News (3.6 million primetime viewers), MSNBC (2.1 million), and CNN (1.8 million) ended up as 2020’s most watched cable networks overall
• 16% of Americans cite cable news as their primary source of political information, 18% get their news from social media
• 34% of people aged 55–64 and 35% aged 65 and over said they regularly watched cable news. For comparison, 27% of people in the 45–54 age group, 24% in the 30–44 bracket, and just 15% of those aged 18–29 watch cable news broadcasts every day. 42% of Gen-Zers and young millennials (18–29) never watch cable news
• BBC News is the most trusted news channel in the US (56% of Americans find it trustworthy)
• Fox News has been the most watched cable news channel for the last 19 years
• White Americans account for 74% of Fox News' total viewership
• 52% of CNN's viewers are white

https://letter.ly/cable-news-viewership-statistics/

It's hard to draw conclusions from stats like this. Millions of Americans watch "Reality" TV, too, and I don't get the appeal of either to be honest. Just like Reality TV, cable news' own output often feeds the next day's news cycle with some talking head saying something outrageous or dumb or both.

Fox has actually been bleeding viewers to more extreme right-wing channels like OANN, Newsmax, The Blaze and America's Voice, especially after Fox was the first network to call the presidency for Biden, and only a few hosts continued with the Big Lie narrative.

Perhaps, rather than trying to determine why so many people are watching conservative cable news programming, it would be more interesting to find out what would happen if it went away?

Probably never will happen 

But

Nothing really explains the collapse of liberal media when liberal issues are so prominent.

I have genz grandkids and I love them, but they are as politically dumb as a rock! Graduate college and think they deserve to collect subsidy checks and have their tuition loans paid by taxpayers! Whilst managing skiing  and snorkeling trips, while living at home.

mtierney said:

Probably never will happen 

But

Nothing really explains the collapse of liberal media when liberal issues are so prominent.

I have genz grandkids and I love them, but they are as politically dumb as a rock! Graduate college and think they deserve to collect subsidy checks and have their tuition loans paid by taxpayers! Whilst managing skiing  and snorkeling trips, while living at home.

As a Gen-Xer whose tuition fees were paid by taxpayers, I appreciate the laugh.

Of course, though, as a true conservative you have to blame their parents. 

Added an emoji to this as I didn't intend it to be mean, just a joke.

mtierney said:

Probably never will happen 

But

Nothing really explains the collapse of liberal media when liberal issues are so prominent.

I have genz grandkids and I love them, but they are as politically dumb as a rock! Graduate college and think they deserve to collect subsidy checks and have their tuition loans paid by taxpayers! Whilst managing skiing  and snorkeling trips, while living at home.

If our tax dollars were funding higher education instead of exclusionary low density zoning in high demand cities, do you think they'd still be living at home?

ridski said:

Of course, though, as a true conservative you have to blame their parents.

brilliant!!

mtierney said:

Probably never will happen 

But

Nothing really explains the collapse of liberal media when liberal issues are so prominent.

I have genz grandkids and I love them, but they are as politically dumb as a rock! Graduate college and think they deserve to collect subsidy checks and have their tuition loans paid by taxpayers! Whilst managing skiing  and snorkeling trips, while living at home.

I started college in 1975.  At that time, a student could finance 4 years while earning money waiting tables where the money earned was a decent chunk of monthly living expenses AND, at the end of those 4 years, have a reasonable expectation of getting a job where the starting salary was equal to the loan balance they had to pay off.  Now, that just isn't possible.  So, there are good reasons to be concerned with the cost of college and good reasons to help students with the cost of college.

College debt is crushing younger people and more and more young people are just giving up on the idea of earning a college degree.

I started college in 1975 too. Went to SUNY Binghamton. If I recall correctly, tuition and dorm expenses were less than $1500 a semester.

Grandma should study up on the facts before badmouthing the grandkids like that. 

nohero said:

Grandma should study up on the facts before badmouthing the grandkids like that. 

grandkids are probably liberals…

drummerboy said:

I started college in 1975 too. Went to SUNY Binghamton. If I recall correctly, tuition and dorm expenses were less than $1500 a semester.

My first semester at Seton Hall, the tuition was $1250 a semester. I didn't live on campus, so with the grants I got from Pell and NJ, my entire first year cost me roughly $1000.  I was making only $3/HR in my job, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out I was able to earn my yearly tuition by the end of the summer before my first year.

ml1 said:

drummerboy said:

I started college in 1975 too. Went to SUNY Binghamton. If I recall correctly, tuition and dorm expenses were less than $1500 a semester.

My first semester at Seton Hall, the tuition was $1250 a semester. I didn't live on campus, so with the grants I got from Pell and NJ, my entire first year cost me roughly $1000.  I was making only $3/HR in my job, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out I was able to earn my yearly tuition by the end of the summer before my first year.

I actually wanted to say my costs were 1500 a year, but that seemed way too low, so I'm assuming it was per semester. I've been trying to find out what SUNY tuition was back then, but no luck so far.

and with regard to cable news ratings, I know nobody listens to me, but I know a little bit about the subject, having once been head of research for a TV news network. The first thing to note is that a rating is an average minute audience. It's a metric that was developed primarily for advertisers to estimate how many people are seeing their ads. It is NOT a measure of the total number of people who watched at least part of a one-hour program. And if we are looking at a weekly program average, it isn't the total number of people who watched at least a portion of any of the episodes.

So in general a show's rating is considerably smaller than its cumulative audience over an hour or a week. A particular rating number can be achieved by either having a constant but smaller number of people watch for longer durations, or a larger total audience watching for shorter duration.

For example, if 4 million people watched a program by cable talking head Cucker Tarlson for the full hour, that program would have an average minute rating of 4 million people. At the same time, if Lon Demon had eight million people watch for an average of 30 minutes of his one hour program, that program would also have an average audience of 4 million people even though twice as many people watched at least some of the hour.

I haven't done any deep dive analysis of cable news in many years, but in the past Fox News tended to generate high ratings by its viewers watching very long duration, compared to other news networks. Of course, the magnitude of Fox's prime ratings lead over its competitors suggest they have both a larger cumulative audience AND longer duration. BUT -- an average minute rating by itself won't tell you the total number of people that watch a program. Because it isn't designed to.

Of course we could also point out that in a country of roughly 330 million people, the vast majority of people are NOT watching ANY cable news program on a typical night. So anyone crowing about the ratings for right wing news should realize that multiples more people are watching other things on their TV screens each night.

And don't even get me started on news network demos...

drummerboy said:

ml1 said:

drummerboy said:

I started college in 1975 too. Went to SUNY Binghamton. If I recall correctly, tuition and dorm expenses were less than $1500 a semester.

My first semester at Seton Hall, the tuition was $1250 a semester. I didn't live on campus, so with the grants I got from Pell and NJ, my entire first year cost me roughly $1000.  I was making only $3/HR in my job, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out I was able to earn my yearly tuition by the end of the summer before my first year.

I actually wanted to say my costs were 1500 a year, but that seemed way too low, so I'm assuming it was per semester. I've been trying to find out what SUNY tuition was back then, but no luck so far.

$1500 a year sounds about right. I didn't go to Rutgers because I would have had to live on campus, and all in with room & board it was around $4K, and most of that was expenses, not tuition. So I'd say Rutgers was about $1750 a year, and I went to school later than you did.

ml1 said:

and with regard to cable news ratings, I know nobody listens to me, but I know a little bit about the subject, having once been head of research for a TV news network.

You’re listened to.

Still too low for comfort…

DaveSchmidt said:

You’re listened to.

Yeah, what’s that about, ml1?

Any poster who engages in a dialog is always listened to. Thoughtfully so. 

“I know nobody listens to me, but I know a little bit about the subject”

…. It’s like I’m hearing my father’s voice all over again…but I still remember everything he said.

I hear ya 

jimmurphy said:

Yeah, what’s that about, ml1?

Any poster who engages in a dialog is always listened to. Thoughtfully so. 

It was more about when I make a comment about how TV news ratings, it doesn't seem to deter the topic from coming up again and again as if it's some kind of indicator of the dominance of right wing ideas.