|
 Previous
| Next
| Home
Intro | Content Analysis | Audience | Economics | Ownership | News Investment | Public Attitudes | Conclusion | Charts & Tables
| Guest
Essay
Audience
The Big Picture
From a distance, people may think 2004 must have been a year
of ascendancy for cable news. In September, Fox News earned
enormous publicity for attracting more viewers during the
last two nights of the Republican convention than any other
source, including the broadcast networks. With the exception
of the first nights of the Gulf War in 1991, no one could
recall another moment when a cable news channel had bettered
a broadcast network news program in live head-to-head coverage
of a breaking news event. Was it a watershed? Perhaps.
Yet the impression that cable's audience is ever-growing,
or that 2004 was cable's greatest year, is mistaken. Indeed,
in assessing what is going on in cable audiences, four much
more complicated trends stand out.
-
Over all, a close look at the numbers suggests that the
audience for cable news, after being basically flat for
nearly two years, drifted upward in the last two months
of the election campaign to help create a slight uptick
in cable's audience year to year.
-
Fox News, which had been rising steadily since 1996,
is still growing, while CNN, its biggest rival, is still
declining. But Fox is now growing at a slower rate than
before, and CNN's losses appear to be flattening.
-
In 2004, there was also growing evidence that the cable
news audience was splintering along partisan lines -- particularly
for Republicans who have left CNN and migrated to Fox.
-
At the same time, new data suggest that the growth potential
of cable audiences may have reached its limit, as most
of the people who could have access to cable news now
have it and have made their consumer choices.
Overall Viewership
Between 1996 and 2002, cable viewership climbed fairly steadily.
The usual pattern involved crises engendering growth. During
major events, more people than before would gravitate to cable,
and afterwards, some portion of them would continue as regular
viewers. The peak and valley effect was particularly the case
after the 2000 election and then after the terrorist attacks
of September 11, 2001. Both events boosted what might be called
cable's core audience, the group that tended to watch day
in and day out.
That growth pattern, as we reported last year, seemed to
cease in 2003, even with the war in Iraq. Cable saw a huge
audience spike -- one of its biggest ever -- but over time it
lost all of it.
What happened in 2004?
For most of the year, cable news viewership fluctuated between
roughly two and three million viewers. CNN, Fox News, and
MSNBC were unable to hold onto the viewers they gained during
the Iraq war in 2003 and subsequent major news events such
as the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 and the
death of Ronald Reagan in June 2004.
That ceiling on the cable audience held until the party conventions
and the election, which bumped viewership to roughly 4 million.
The cable channels managed to keep about half of that expanded
audience in November, but by December the audience was back
at 2.55 million -- slightly higher than the 2.47 million viewers
in January 2004, but less than the 2.59 million viewers watching
in December 2003, when the capture of Saddam Hussein helped
spike viewership.
Year-To-Year Growth
There are a number of ways to calculate year-to-year ratings.
Typically, the cable networks take each month of ratings and
calculate an arithmetic average. That number tends to take
maximum advantage of momentary audience spikes.
Given the volatility of cable news audiences, however, that
may not be the best way to measure cable's core audience,
that is, the audience it gets most of the time. It also tends
to punish cable in the years that there are no major news
events, and reward it unduly when there are.
A more accurate way to assess cable's core audience is to
use the median -- a measurement that captures the midpoint
between a channel's highest and lowest viewership.
Comparing 2004 and 2003, overall median primetime cable news
viewership rose by 6%, from 2.45 million to 2.60 million.
The daytime median audience rose 5%, from 1.48 million to
1.56 million.
Thus the cable news audience grew in 2004, but it is now
growing at a much slower rate than just two years ago. The
6% growth for primetime audience in 2004 follows a very modest
3% median audience growth rate in 2003 over the year before.
Compare that with 2002, when the median audience grew by 41%,
or 2001, when it grew by 32%.
What's more, had it not been for three months covering the
conventions and the election, overall cable viewership would
have been even flatter. To get a sense of the ratings boost
provided by the final months of the election campaign, consider
what the median audience looked like for the 12 months ending
in August 2004. During that time, the total number of viewers
of cable news fell by 4% from the same twelve-month period
the year before.
Prime Time Cable News Audience Growth
|
|
Annual growth rate, all networks, 1999 to 2004
|
|
|
|
Design
Your Own Chart
|
How would things look if audience data were calculated the
way the cable channels do it, using the arithmetic mean average?
Calculating the data this way, the cable news audience fell
by 12% in 2004, from 3.22 million viewers in 2003 to 2.84
million. The daytime audience dropped even more, by 21%, to
1.61 million. Yet as we said before, we believe this drop
overstates things because it tends to exaggerate the impact
of the audience spike during the war in Iraq in the spring
of 2003.
Fox's Leadership
How are the three major cable news networks faring individually?
In 2004 Fox remained cable news's undisputed leader in ratings,
or the number of people watching at any given time.
By one way of measuring, looking at total viewership throughout
the day, Rupert Murdoch's news network generally commanded
around 55% of cable news audience during the year, according
to Nielsen Media Research's measurement of "total day"
viewing. This figure measures the average number of viewers
over the course of an entire day -- 24 hours. CNN is second
in total-day viewership, with roughly 30%; MSNBC captures
the remaining 15 percent.
More commonly, networks and advertisers look at ratings for
different dayparts.
Measuring ratings this way, Fox News is still the leader,
and is still growing. Its median audience in prime time rose
by 10% in 2004 over the year before, to 1.47 million viewers
from 1.34 million. In daytime, its median also increased,
by 11%, to 856,000 in 2004, up from 770,000 in 2003.
CNN remained in second place, with 815,000 median prime-time
viewers, a drop of 2% from 832,000 in 2003. Its median daytime
viewership, meanwhile, was 482,000, a drop of 4% from 2003.
MSNBC, still in third place, had median viewership of 341,000
in prime time, though that represented a healthy increase
of 19% over the 287,000 viewers it had in 2003. Its median
daytime viewership, meanwhile, barely changed, from 222,000
in 2003 to 224,000 in 2004.
Will Fox be able to sustain its growth past the election
season?
From now on, to grow, Fox News must focus more on winning
over viewers who already had access to it but heretofore chose
not to watch, or not to watch as much. In that context, it
is striking that the rate of growth in median audience has
been declining since 2001. In that year, Fox's median audience
grew 113% compared with 2000. In 2002, the year it overtook
CNN, the median Fox News audience grew 73%.
Since then, median audience growth has been much smaller:
in 2003, the year of the war in Iraq, the median audience
grew 18%. In 2004, as noted, the increase was just 10%.
Nonetheless, Fox's audience trends are better than those
of its rivals.
Audience Take Two: How Many People Watch Cable
The other issue when it comes to understanding the cable
audience is the question of total audience, or how many different
people watch cable through the course of the day. Ratings
measure how many people are watching at any given moment,
which is a fine measurement for advertisers who want to know
how many eyeballs may watch a particular spot. And it makes
sense for broadcast television, where each program is a unique
offering.
For cable, however, in which the network provides a similar
product for many hours of the day, ratings are incomplete.
In trying to assess where people get their news, it is useful
also to know how many different people are going there. In
the TV business, this measurement is known as "cume"
(as in cumulative); it's analogous to the online industry's
measurement of "unique visitors."
CNN has long argued that despite its lag in ratings- the
number of sets tuned to it nationwide at a given time -- more
people over all watch it. The Project obtained monthly "cume"
ratings from CNN for the fall of 2003 and all of 2004. (Viewers
are counted as part of a channel's "cume" measurement
if they watch for six minutes or longer.) The data show that
indeed, CNN consistently gets more "unique viewers" -- the total number of viewers who tune to the channel at some
point during a given month -than Fox. The pattern is as consistent
as the ratings pattern: CNN holds a sizable lead in this measurement,
which is called cumulative audience. Fox News is in second
place, and MSNBC last. In the typical month some 64 million
different people tune to CNN at some point. Fox generally
attracts 56 million individual viewers. MSNBC lags behind
with 48 million.
The pattern of cumulative viewership showed CNN leading Fox
News by a margin of 5 million viewers or more for most of
2004. The gap narrowed slightly in September and October but
widened again in November. CNN reached its highest cume in
recent months in December 2003, the month of Saddam Hussein's
capture; in all, 77.8 million different people watched CNN
that month, according to Nielsen.
The numbers suggest that CNN is still the first choice for
people trying to get a fix on the latest breaking news. For
example, on Election Day, CNN beat out Fox in unique viewers
by 6 million -- 38 million for CNN, 32 million for Fox. MSNBC
was far behind with 19 million. Given that CNN is the default
option for so many people looking for cable news, the size
of Fox News's ratings margin over CNN is particularly striking.
CNN argues that its higher cume makes it a better choice
for advertisers because its ads will reach more people over
the course of a given day. Fox News argues that CNN's "cume"
figures don't matter because they're simply a measurement
of "channel surfers." Indeed, in advertisements
in trade magazines that reach the media planners who make
decisions about where to place ad budgets, Fox has taken that
argument a step further by arguing, "If CNN's advertising
is misleading, why would you trust their journalism?"
Last year, while we didn't have CNN's "cume" figures,
we found evidence to support its argument in survey data.
More people told pollsters that they watched CNN than Fox,
which seemed to support the cumulative audience idea.
This year, however, the survey data support Fox's hold on
viewers.
The Pew Research Center's 2004 poll on media consumption
showed for the first time that Fox News had surpassed CNN
as the preferred outlet for cable news. Fox News was cited
as a "regular" source of news by 25% of people in
Pew's latest survey, up from 22% in 2002; CNN dropped three
points, to 22%, from 25% in 2002.
So which measure is most meaningful? Ratings, CNN's "cume"
data or survey research? Each yardstick has its own strengths
and weaknesses. Research conducted by an academic team at
Ball State University in 2004- involving surveys, consumers
filling out "diaries," and researchers observing
media use first hand -- also found that survey data appear
to consistently undercount media use. People simply use media
more than they tell or can recall when surveyed, by magnitudes
of three and four times.
Ratings are the closest thing advertisers have to determining
how many eyeballs may see an ad at a given moment.
Taken together, however, the data suggest that the picture
is more complicated than ratings alone suggest. If you want
to know which network more people watch, Fox and CNN apparently
are much closer than if you ask which network has higher ratings
at any given moment.
This gap between CNN's ability to attract an audience and
its inability to keep viewers around for the long haul is
the main challenge facing the network. But it is also a sign
that the cable audience is not monolithic. The data suggest
that it is worth looking at cable news in terms of two separate
audiences: the day-to-day core audience and the occasional,
"news on demand" audience. While Fox News has a
larger core audience, CNN may be the winner when it comes
to the "news on demand" people.
Cable Partisanship
In 2004, there was also growing evidence that the cable news
audience was splintering along partisan lines. In particular,
viewership of Fox News leans toward Republicans. To a lesser
degree, CNN's viewership tilts towards Democrats. Democrats
and Republicans are equally likely to say they watch MSNBC.
The 2004 media consumption survey by the Pew Research Center
for the People & the Press finds that 35% of Republicans
say they are regular Fox News viewers, compared with just
21% of Democrats. Meanwhile, 28% of Democrats are regular
CNN viewers, while only 19% of Republicans say they watch
it regularly.
Percentage of Party Members Watching
Specific Cable News Channels
| |
Democrats |
Republicans |
Independents |
| CNN |
28% |
19% |
22% |
| Fox News |
21% |
35% |
22% |
| MSNBC |
12% |
10% |
12% |
Much was made of those statistics in 2004, along with data
showing more Republicans losing trust in the media generally.
It was suggested that Americans were moving to their own ideological
corners in their media consumption, that we were moving toward
"Red and Blue truth," in the words of Time Magazine,
or a more European style of ideological media. Perhaps the
American model of a nonideological independent press was dying.
But the data suggest to us something more nuanced and less
spectacular. The polarization phenomenon tends to occur primarily
within the cable news audience, and not necessarily across
the entire television news spectrum. A broad look (see Overview)
shows that this ideological splintering exists in cable as
nowhere else, and exists more at Fox News than anywhere else.
Indeed, MSNBC's audience is evenly divided, and CNN, while
it has lost Republicans to Fox, has almost as many independents
as it does Democrats. In addition, Democrats are almost as
likely to watch Fox as CNN.
Democrats simply don't watch cable as often as Republicans.
According to the Pew Research Center's 2004 survey, while
nearly half (46%) of Republicans are "regular" cable
news viewers, only 36% of Democrats are "regulars."
Democrats are more likely to be "occasional" cable
news viewers than Republicans (36% vs. 27%).
Within the specific cable channels, what appears to be happening
over time is a migration of Republicans to Fox. In a breakdown
of Fox's audience by party affiliation, the percentage that
is Republican has increased considerably over the past six
years, from 24% in 1998 to 41% in 2004. But there has not
been a similar migration of Democrats to CNN or anywhere else.
The data tell us something fascinating about cable and how
it has come to resemble talk radio not only in content but
in appeal. But they suggest far less about some growing trends
in the media over all.
The On-Demand Viewer
The Pew Research Center's studies suggest that cable news
has consolidated a core audience of viewers but that it is
occasionally able to draw additional viewers who seek out
news when significant events are happening. Those people could
be described as "news on demand" viewers. Rather
than routinely watching a TV news program at a given time
of day, they tune in when events pique their interest.
The surveys suggest that this "news on demand"
pattern is particularly true for younger viewers. Adults under
age 30 who "regularly" watch television news are
more likely to watch cable than the broadcast networks by
29% to 18%. This preference for cable among younger viewers
is important. Rather than setting aside time to watch the
network news at a specific hour -- what's known as "appointment
television" -- younger adults are more likely to go to
cable, which is available any time they choose to tune in.
And looking more closely at those cable viewing habits, there
is evidence of the same news on demand behavior. Younger cable
viewers are more likely than other groups to only watch on
occasion, presumably when something is happening, rather than
as a regular habit. The plurality of young cable viewers,
37%, describe themselves as "occasional" viewers,
the highest of any age group in that category. Moreover, it's
been that way for quite some time.
The bulk of the cable news audience, however, is made up
of older Americans, who in general consume more news than
younger ones (with the exception of online news). Their responses
are the mirror image of the younger group's -- they call themselves
regular consumers of cable rather than occasional but ultimately
prefer network. Among people over 65 years old, 46% are "regular"
cable news viewers, but 57% are "regular" network
news viewers.
Does Cable News Have Room To Grow?
The question for the future is whether cable's big growth
years are over.
Media analyst Tom Wolzien of Sanford C. Bernstein, analyzing
Nielsen data on 50 of the most-watched cable networks, noted
that from 2000 to 2004 their cumulative share of the cable
TV audience remained static. The growth in viewership has
come in the acquisition of cable service by more and more
households. Viewership remained flat among consumers who already
had cable service throughout the period. Fox News in particular
seems to have benefited from increased distribution.
In an interview with USA Today, Wolzien suggested that the
cable networks are now "cannibalizing" from each
other rather than winning viewers from broadcast. He predicted
that for cable in general, barring better programming and
more investment, the size of the audience would peak in 2009.
Fox News's growth to date seems to represent both phenomena -- adding more cable systems and stealing viewers from its
rivals. Consider that in 2002, the median prime-time cable
audience was 2.37 million viewers, and 48% of it was tuned
to Fox News. Two years later, the median primetime cable audience
was only slightly more, 2.61 million viewers, but now 57%
of it was watching Fox.
The overall audience did grow over those two years, slightly,
but Fox's share grew even more, a sign of cannibalizing its
cable rivals.
In the same period, Fox gained more audience than CNN lost,
a sign that some of that audience also came from growing distribution.
Indeed, between 2000 and 2004 MSNBC extended its potential
reach of new cable systems by almost 30 million cable subscribers,
while Fox News added closer to 40 million. CNN, meanwhile,
which was already carried on most cable systems, gained only
10 million more potential subscribers over those four years.
The Election Effect
Cable news was one of the most-cited sources for election
news throughout the presidential campaign. A January 2004
study by Pew Research Center asked people, "How often,
if ever, do you learn something about the presidential campaign
or the candidates" and offered a list of specific news
sources. The survey found that cable news was one of the few
news sources people were likely to rely on more than they
did four years earlier -- 38%, up from 34% in 2000.
The late summer and early fall of 2004 showed growth in cable
news viewership, but by October the audience had peaked. Indeed,
Pew Research Center surveys show that by the final months
of the presidential campaign the number of people turning
to cable news as a source for election news was flat or had
fallen.
Fox News was the only network to hold steady, cited as a source
by 20% of Americans in January and 21% in November. CNN, which
had been the most popular cable source in January (22%), was
the choice of only 15% of Americans surveyed in November;
MSNBC, the choice of 7% in January, was named as a source
by 6% in November.
The sharp, partisan divides between audiences for the three
cable channels that became clear in 2004 -Fox News clearly
the channel preferred by Republicans, CNN viewers more likely
to be Democratic -showed up starkly in ratings for the political
conventions, when the parties most plainly presented their
case to the American public. Those ratings suggest that the
division may be more one-sided than it first appears. Republicans
clearly migrated to Fox, but audience figures suggest that
Democrats were not as clearly aligned with CNN. A more thorough
discussion of this phenomenon follows in Public Attitudes.
During the Democratic convention, viewership was distributed
fairly evenly (in fact, more evenly than usual) among the
three cable channels: CNN (plus Headline News) was the most-watched
channel, with 43% of the cable audience over the course of
the convention; Fox News was watched by roughly a third (35%)
of the audience; and MSNBC, which is typically watched by
15% of the cable news audience, was watched by at least a
fifth (22%).
Cable viewership increased from 4.8 million on the convention's
first night to 6.8 million on the Thursday night of John Kerry's
acceptance speech.
The pattern was remarkably different during the Republican
convention a month later. From the first night, Fox News dominated
the fight for viewers, attracting 65% of the cable audience
that night and maintaining its lead over the next three. In
addition, Fox News steadily picked up viewers, going from
3.9 million on the first night (out of 5.98 million cable
viewers) to 5.3 million (out of 8.55 million cable viewers)
on Thursday. On the final nights of the convention, indeed,
it was the single most-watched network, beating the broadcast
networks as well as its cable rivals.
While total viewership on both network and cable television
was roughly the same between the Democratic and Republican
conventions, Fox News's surge in viewership during the Republican
convention seemed due in part to partisan Republicans' flocking
to that network.
(For a discussion of the substance of cable news convention
coverage, see News
Investment.)
Another factor was probably the general abdication from convention
coverage by the broadcast networks. NBC, CBS and ABC each
devoted only three prime-time hours to each convention, one
hour on each of three nights, and skipped one night of both
conventions altogether). That absence of broadcast network
coverage contributed to the cable numbers.
Audience: A Conclusion
So what is the future for cable audiences? Most likely it
will not be based on drawing dramatically new numbers of people
freshly wired to cable boxes. Rather, it will have to be built
around establishing viewer loyalty -- by building its own
dedicated audience, cannibalizing from the news competition,
and winning more of the 'information' audience that drifts
to channels like Discovery, History, or TLC.
That outlook has a number of implications.
One is that to grow further, cable will have to do more than
the things Fox has done so far -- attract an audience with
talk radio-style programming and steal conservatives away
from CNN. It will have to attract new viewers with new kinds
of programming.
Another is that cable executives will increasingly focus
not just on numbers of viewers but on something called "time
viewed" -- the length of time those viewers hang around -- as well as demographics.
When it comes to time viewed, the implications for the future
may not be good for news, or at least what traditionalists
would consider news. The "traditional newscast"
at best would attract viewers to a single program, not over
time. Yet to date, the signature newscast (MSNBC originally
had high hopes for "The News with Brian Williams")
has been a ratings loser in cable compared with the talk formats
(like Larry King, O'Reilly, or Matthews). If that continues
to be true, there will be even more emphasis on personality.
That's what's working, that's what's winning and that's what
viewer loyalty seems to be built on. Here, Fox seems to have
had the upper hand so far. It has more programs built around
personalities, and it apparently has viewers sticking around
longer. If personality is the path, then the Fox approach
would seem to be the model others will copy.
Another question is how you define success. Any discussion
of the future "growth" of the cable audience will
likely break audience growth down into demographics. All ratings
points are not created equal; viewers with higher incomes
are more desirable to advertisers. That, industry insiders
explain, is how Lou Dobbs's Moneyline program was sold for
so many years. It had relatively low ratings, but charged
high ad rates because of the presumed desirability of the
audience. If cable cannot increase the sheer numbers, can
it increase its appeal to specific demographics? It would
like to do so, but it has shown little boldness to date in
going upscale, for fear of losing the overall ratings wars.
Here, potentially, CNN and MSNBC may have an opening to do
something Fox has not.
Indeed, the small percentage increases and declines in audience
growth CNN and MSNBC have experienced illustrate the problem
facing both channels as they compete against Fox News. Neither
appears to have leadership willing to take a risk on an approach
to the news that might prove either a breakout success or
a ratings disaster. Instead, by attempting variations of what
Fox has shown is successful, both channels in their own distinct
ways have failed to create their own distinct formulas.
CNN has moved in the direction of talk shows, à la
Fox, but has never gone for the ideological edge. MSNBC has
also moved in that direction, but the political stances have
varied -- sometimes to the left ("Donahue"), sometimes
to the right ("Scarborough Country"), and sometimes
both. During the daytime, MSNBC has shifted toward a BBC or
radio style "newswheel," with regular previews of
what is coming in the next 15 minutes, and regular news summaries.
If CNN and MSNBC do not change their content substantially,
there would seem to be little reason to believe their ratings
will change in any dramatic way. Yet if Fox News's growth
continues to slow, or even stop, it is possible that its formula
of talk programs may no longer be the model the others try
to emulate.
Click
here to view footnotes for this section.
Previous
| Next
| Home
Intro | Content Analysis | Audience | Economics | Ownership | News Investment | Public Attitudes | Conclusion | Charts & Tables
| Guest
Essay
|
Go to Journalism.org | View 2004 Edition 
Print this page