Not true at all. Look up the actual viewing figures. Less than 1% of the population watches CNN's morning news show. They most intentionally do NOT broadcast to the 'mainstream audience'. Careers are made and broken by appealing to perhaps 1% of the population (or 0.5%...) rather than the current 0.9% or so.
Its a mix of HN elitism combined with gross over estimation of cultural impact WRT a cultural icon that doesn't matter anymore.
They do not broadcast to the mainstream, they try to steal away fractions of a percent of weirdo daytime news network junkies from other networks, not boost viewership from the 99% of "normal" people who don't watch that kind of thing.
Its like top40 music or hollywood movies in that way.
The public already agrees, but I appreciate their effort. MSM broadcasts nowadays have very few active viewers. Youtubers have many times that of the MSM. MSM are trying to play catch-up on Youtube, but they get heavily "disliked".
Yes, I didn't mean literally nobody, I just meant that compared to other markets MSNBC is fairly small so I can understand missing who Rachel Maddow is if you don't watch MSNBC or follow political blogs, shes not O'reilly or Jon Stewart, but yes it is a mainstream cable TV channel so that necessitates some minimum audience size lest the channel go off the air
They are news entertainment not just to him, pretty much all the mainstream sources are news entertainment. They're not objective. This argument seems like calling breakfast cereal breakfast whereas it's marketed as part of a complete breakfast. The differences are subtle, like the WHO is a political organization that covers medical topics. A decent write up of the broadcast transition: https://www.medialit.org/reading-room/whatever-happened-news
It seems pretty popular to me. You're misconstruing "that's popular and people watch it" for "I agree with what the person is saying".
Many people watch it. It makes money. Anderson Cooper makes money. Ergo the market is speaking quite clearly.
For example, as vile, absolutely stupid, and wrong as Tucker Carlson is, the market is clearly speaking and he's quite popular.
Now if you want to change your definition or raise your bar or something, sure go for it, but without any parameters I think anyone on prime time on CNN or any major news channel is by definition popular.
My take is basically the same. The cable news media covers what their audience watches.
It's also worth noting that while MSNBC is the 2nd or 3rd most watched network (depending on the month) there are only about 1.6 million people regularly watching and that number is down 14% year over year. So even if they snub your candidate, it may not matter much at all.
I don't buy this thesis that all networks are equally bad.
They all want ratings yes, but some of them try to get ratings by appealing to people who are smart, who value information over grief-mongering. Who value data-driven news. Who are not numerically illiterate.
When there is misinformation we need news about that, to counteract the misinformation.
I do wish MSNBC had a program that analyzed the coverage, non-coverage, and misleading information by some other networks. That would give them ratings from people who value truth and true information, truly important information.
Thats really the wrong metric to look at. Yes they are the largest but the median age of their viewer base is 70 years old. They are mainstream only in a few circles but don't really represent the mainstream of America. In fact along with MSNBC/CNN(median age 65) they have declining viewership numbers. This is why all these networks are making a big push(failing) into streaming.
Probably double digit millions if you add it all together. There is likely a lot of overlap. "News junkies" watching ten newscasts equals ten views, but doesn't equal ten different viewers.
Maybe triple digits if you add the entire world together across all languages and cultures. But that might be pushing it.
The primary use of the news is signalling positions to the other side. Nobody is supposed to learn anything from it, just signal to other groups.
Sinclair viewership numbers dwarf MSNBC’s. They own local news affiliates reaching 40% of American households. MSNBC gets south of 2m viewers in prime time.
That is what passes for entertainment these days. Who do you thinking is following the feeds? Who is watching the cnn warrooms? The general public is rooting for or against whatever they believe.
Is that out of the norm of how daily television news and late night shows present their content? The only difference I see is the Veritas muckrakers’ tactic of going undercover as a sympathetic listener.
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