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Cable TV

Intro

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

Cable TV news is maturing. The medium that changed journalism at the end of the last century is no longer a new technology, with all the growth, experimentation, controversy and sense of zeitgeist that entails.

The audience for the main three cable news channels has not only stopped growing, in 2006 it began to decline. Even Fox News, though it still dominated the competition, saw its first drop, after six years of meteoric growth.

Financially, the sector remains robust. And 2006 was a particularly big year for Fox News. It began to sign new license fee agreements with cable carriers, successfully tripling its rates, which put it among the top five channels in price. With final numbers not yet in, analysts predicted that Fox News would surpass CNN in profitability. Analysts expected revenues and profits to grow at the other channels, too.

The inevitable question, one seen by other media over the years, is whether cable now has to manage profits as the audience base declines. The other question is how much cable will invest those rising profits in the Internet and mobile technology, which are not part of its legacy business of programming television.

The answer will depend on the owners, of course. There was no changing of the guard or major sale in 2006, but there were more subtle changes. MSNBC, with Microsoft no longer involved and NBC firmly in charge, carried out a restructuring program, a management shakeup, and a new push toward politics and opinion. At Fox News’s parent, News Corp., Rupert Murdoch settled a simmering dispute over control, and reflected on 10 years of cable news success. CNN saw Ted Turner, already gone from operational involvement, formally leave its parent company’s board.

The impact on the newsroom of all this is harder to divine, in part because the networks like it that way. Fox News is building, and expenses generally are rising — though not as much as profits — but it is less clear how much of the rise is going into reporters, producers and newsgathering muscle, and how much elsewhere. The clearest sense one has is that generally the cable news channels, including CNN Headline News, are moving more toward personalities, often opinionated ones, to win audiences. The most strident voices, such as Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck, are among the biggest successes in winning viewers, as is CNN’s new crusader, Lou Dobbs. How much those individual shows affect a channel’s overall audience is harder to gauge. Their growth in 2006 was substantial, particularly among 25-to-54-year-olds, but those gains were not enough to stanch the overall declines.

The shifts toward even edgier opinion are also probably a response to another change. Cable is beginning to lose its claim as the primary destination for what was once its main appeal: news on demand. That is something the Internet can now provide more efficiently. As cable channels lose their monopoly over breaking news, they will likely continue to push their identities toward something else. That is also a reason that the cable channels are putting even more effort into their Web sites. And there, Fox News is trailing, not leading.

The public appears to be becoming more skeptical of cable. While trust remains high relative to other media sectors, it generally is declining. The audience is also fragmenting further by ideology, with MSNBC’s audience the most liberal.

In short, with age, cable news is showing signs of beginning to suffer some of the same problems other media have. If Act I of cable was the immediacy of CNN, and Act II was the rise of Fox News, we may be embarking on new plot twist.

Audience

The cable news landscape is changing in ways that are more subtle than in previous years, and that hints at differences not only in the purpose of cable news but also the channels people go to at different times in different ways.

For 2006, four trends stand out:

• The average audience of the three main cable news channels was declining.
• The drops at Fox News were the largest of all and marked the first time the cable news leader had begun to bleed viewers.
• But there were signs that the cumulative audience, or the number of different people in the course of a month who view cable news, was still growing. With average audience in decline, that would mean more people visited cable news occasionally but didn’t stay as long.
• The growth in MSNBC and some individual programs on CNN Headline News seem to be associated with the rise of even sharper opinions in prime time, and the declines at Fox News raise questions about whether its longtime evening lineup is losing some of its appeal.
• Relative to each other, the three cable news channels performed according to type. Fox News remained well ahead of the competition again. While CNN managed to attract the largest share of unique viewers and did better during big events, Fox News dominated in the number of eyeballs watching at any given moment. MSNBC, meanwhile, stayed in third place, though with new managers at the helm there was some improvement in its performance, compared to previous years

But with subscribers reaching a plateau, viewership among the three main channels is declining. And with more competition from the Web, PDA’s, phones and more (see Digital) the trends of 2006 are only likely to continue.

The Three Types of News on Cable

The journalism on the cable news channels, the analyst Andrew Tyndall suggests, serves three distinct sets of needs.¹

The first is News on Demand, updating the latest headlines available at any time during the 24-hour news cycle.

The second is Crisis Coverage, wall-to-wall, comprehensive, on-the-scene, constantly updated journalism on a handful of essential stories that occur each year — Katrina, 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, the Clinton impeachment, or the undecided election.

The third is Prime-time Personality, News & Opinion Programming, the evening shows that include a mix of nightly-newscast-style headlines, opinionated commentary, newsmaker interviews, analysis and true-crime celebrity programming. These are the shows that Fox News and others have made into distinctive programs, not tied to breaking news, that people arrange their schedule to watch, so-called appointment viewing.

A close look at which cable audience numbers are declining, and at which times — dayparts, to use industry jargon — reveals the different patterns of how people are now beginning to use cable.

Common sense suggests that news on demand would be the kind of coverage most vulnerable to the rise of the Internet, PDAs and other technologies for instant headlines. Indeed the declines in 2006 in the most basic numbers — average audience — seem to confirm that.

But the audience data suggest something more. The audiences for prime-time news and opinion programming dropped even more than daytime, a sign that it’s not just news on demand that is losing its appeal. Some prime-time opinion and personality programming on CNN and even more on Fox News may be losing sway.

The audience for crisis coverage — long cable’s biggest draw in raw numbers — is harder to discern from 2006. The numbers were not strong compared with other years, but it may be that the crises of 2006 simply did not command the kind of interest of previous ones.

And the problems at Fox News, new this year, appear to be across the board, hinting that the news channel may be facing its first significant signs of getting middle aged.

For all that, if a fourth channel, CNN Headline News, is thrown into the mix, the message becomes slightly more nuanced. Its audience grew substantially in 2005, putting it within arm’s reach of MSNBC. But in 2006, despite the gains of one notable prime-time program, the news channel over all saw viewership decline.

Cable Audiences: Viewership Declines

By the most basic measure, average audience each month, the viewership for the main three news channels collectively in 2006 was down in both dayparts.²

Cable news viewership can be measured in two different ways to arrive at an average monthly audience. The first is “median,” which measures the most typical audience number each month. The industry tends to use a different measure, “mean,” which creates a simple average from each day’s total. We report both here, though we believe mean tends to exaggerate the effect of big stories and thus is less accurate than median (see sidebar on measuring the audience). By both measures, however, the numbers for the three main channels were not good.

Using median, the most typical audience, the prime-time audience for the three cable channels together suffered an 8% decline in 2006.

In viewers, that means 2.5 million people were watching cable news during prime time in 2006, down from 2.7 million in 2005. A year earlier, 2004, prime-time audience was up 4% from 2003.

While we had noted previously that the pace of audience growth in cable had fallen sharply since 2003, this was the first time in six years that there was an actual decline.

Cable News Prime Time Audience

1998 - 2006, Channels Combined

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ Analysis of Nielsen Media Research data, used under license

The trend in daytime viewership was similarly negative. Daytime median audience for all three channels fell 4% in 2006, to 1.5 million viewers, down from 1.6 million in 2005. A year earlier, daytime median audience had risen by 3%.

Calculating cable news viewership for 2006 based on the mean, as the cable channels do, paints an even bleaker picture

Cable News Daytime Audience

1998 - 2006, Channels Combined

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ Analysis of Nielsen Media Research data, used under license

The mean prime-time audience for all three channels combined fell by 12%, to 2.50 million, down from 2.84 million the year before. A year earlier, prime audience was essentially flat, growing less than a percent.

In daytime, the mean audience fell 11% in 2006, to 1.54 million, down from 1.73 million in 2005. A year earlier, the mean daytime audience had grown 7%.

Deeper probing into the different ways of calculating reveals still more clues about why the audience is down.

For instance, the fact that the declines in median audience were greater at night, when the opinion- and personality-driven programming are on, reinforce the idea that cable’s problems go deeper than just people gravitating to other sources for breaking news.

And the greater drop in mean, the measurement more sensitive to audience spikes, supports the idea that the channels enjoyed less of a bounce in 2006 from crisis coverage than in years past.

Cable News Prime Time Audience Growth

1998 - 2006, by Channel

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ Analysis of Nielsen Media Research data, used under license

2006: Channel by Channel

The losses in viewership, however, were not consistent across the three main channels. Fox News, the only channel that was gaining in years past, began to lose audience, and did so at the steepest rate of all. MSNBC, in turn, began to gain.

The Fox News Channel

Fox News remains the cable leader, but for the first time since its launch, it saw losses in viewership year-to-year. What’s more, the drop was consistent across the course of the year and across the dayparts, as well as being sharper than its competitors.

From January to December 2006, Fox News’s median prime-time viewership fell by 14%. That was in sharp contrast to the year before, when it was the only cable news channel to see an increase (9%). The story was repeated in daytime, when its median viewership dropped 12% in 2006. A year earlier it had grown 5%.

If we look at the mean, things don’t change for the better. Fox News saw almost equal declines in the two dayparts, 16% in prime time and 15% in daytime.

Indeed, comparing the number of viewers in 2006 to 2005, Fox News saw a decline in virtually every month, with the greatest gap in the latter half of the year (incidentally, when the big stories of 2006 took place).

Fox News Viewers
2006 vs. 2005

Source: Nielsen Media Research, used under license

If one accepts the notion that daytime is more a period for news on demand, and the evening more a time for personality and opinion programming, Fox News appears to be suffering equally in both kinds of news.

That raises several possibilities. Fox News could be losing viewers to other cable channels (some MSNBC and Headline News programs are growing). Or some of its viewers could be gravitating to other media. And in fact the declines in both dayparts suggest that the problem may be some of both.

Some analysts, such as Andrew Tyndall, also raise the question whether Fox News aligned itself too closely with Bush Administration and the Republican Party. If so, it could be suffering a backlash as the political winds change.

Or it may be in part an age problem; the Fox shows may have become familiar. The lineup in prime time has not changed appreciably in recent years. If that is the problem, then just as CNN began to do in the late 1990s, Fox News may find that it has reached a peak with its current programming and begin to re-imagine some of its shows (something CNN has continued to struggle with).

It also may be that its competitors, notably MSNBC and Headline News, have found ways to finally begin to chip away at some of Fox News’s audience.

Whatever the causes, if the declines continue, they may be compounded by something else: both CNN and MSNBC have more popular Web sites. That could draw even more breaking-news audiences away (see Digital).³

For all this, of course, one should not lose sight of the fact that Fox News remains the dominant channel, both in terms of overall audience and individual shows.

In 2006, more than half the people watching cable news were watching Fox News (as they have since 2001).

The mean audience for Fox News in prime time was 1.4 million in 2006. That is more than triple the viewership of MSNBC (378,000) and almost double that of CNN (739,000). More than half (55%) of all viewers watching prime-time cable news in 2006 were tuned into Fox News.

During the day, 54% of the viewers watching the three main cable news channels were tuned to Fox, again about double CNN and more than triple MSNBC. Fox News averaged 824,000 viewers, against 472,000 for CNN and 244,000 for MSNBC.

By program, Fox News had nine of the top 10 shows, according to Nielsen rankings.⁴ Only CNN’s Larry King broke that monopoly at No. 7. The “O’Reilly Factor” was again the most-watched show on cable news, averaging 2 million viewers a night.

The Top 10 Cable News Shows
December 2006

Source: Nielsen Media Research figures at MediaBistro.com
Note: average audience figures reflect all persons ages 2 and up (P2+)

At CNN, meanwhile, viewership declined as well in 2006. The median figures show a fall that was not as steep as in 2005. It saw a loss of 2% in prime-time median viewership from January to December 2006, far better than the 11% loss in 2005.

CNN’s daytime median viewership was actually up 6% from the year before, in contrast to the decline at Fox News, and better than last year, when it lost 7% of its daytime viewers.

Looking at the numbers using mean, CNN executives have more cause for concern. The channel saw a drop of 12% in average prime-time viewership and about the same decline, 10%, in its average daytime audience.

Even with the drop in overall prime-time audience, some shows did see gains. “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” for instance, grew 30% in the fourth quarter of 2006, while Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer’s shows saw 15% and 18% growth.⁵ Those shows fared even better among viewers 25 to 54 years old, whom advertisers covet. Dobbs grew 57% in the 25-to-54 demographic in the fourth quarter of 2006 compared to same period in 2005. “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” was up 50% and “Anderson Cooper 360” was up 24% in the same audience age range (See News Investment).⁶

MSNBC

If Fox News’s declines were one major change in the cable news landscape, the other big shift came at MSNBC, where viewership by any measure grew in both daytime and prime time in 2006.

The channel’s prime-time median viewership figures rose 7% in 2006 compared with a loss of 2% the year before.

It performed equally well during the day. Daytime median viewership grew 7% in 2006, building on the 3% rise in daytime in 2005.

The metric the industry tends to use, mean, also showed growth at MSNBC. Its average prime-time audience was up by 3%. In daytime, there was 1% growth.

What factors are working in the channel’s favor? Could MSNBC be benefiting from a change of guard or changes in programming, or was it simply a matter of having news to report?

One potential explanation is greater synergy with NBC News — many top-rung NBC anchors appeared on the channel for election coverage, with favorable results. Top executives say they plan to continue such sharing of talent. Synergy is also expected to increase with the physical shift of the MSNBC operations to NBC News’s New York headquarters from New Jersey (see News Investment). MSNBC executives also believe that the changing political climate in the country is helping the channel. Phil Griffin, an NBC News vice president, was quoted in Variety as saying, “The mood has changed and people are looking for a different kind of coverage.”

One prime example of cashing in on the changing political climate is Keith Olbermann’s show, “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” (8 p.m. ET). Olbermann’s is one MSNBC program that has bucked the general trend and increased its key demographic audience in 2006. Compared with the same quarter a year earlier, Olbermann saw a 67% rise among viewers 25 to 54 in the fourth quarter of 2006 (also see News Investment) and a 60% rise in the overall audience.⁷

The steady audience numbers also could help MSNBC’s position on the company ladder as NBC Universal begins its re-structuring and digital initiative in 2007 (see Ownership). Yet all this needs to be kept in context. MSNBC still lags well behind its two chief rivals and is even challenged by CNN’s second network, Headline News.

CNN Headline News

In 2005, as we reported last year, CNN’s sister channel, Headline News, began to emerge out of the cable news shadows and to rival MSNBC in viewership.

In 2006, some of its momentum seems to have waned. Despite the launch of an edgy prime-time conservative talk show that saw big gains, Headline News’ overall prime-time and daytime viewership declined slightly. Its mean prime-time audience was 302,000 in 2006, down 2% from the year before. That left it further behind MSNBC’s 378,000.

In daytime, the channel averaged 218,000 viewers, a much steeper decline, 11% compared with 2005. Here, it is still shy of MSNBC but closer, at 244,000.

The drop in daytime viewers, which was as bad as the drops at CNN or Fox News, may speak to the declining news-on-demand appeal of cable. Those are the hours when Headline News follows it traditional wheel format of headlines only every half hour.

CNN Headline News
Average Audience

Source: Nielsen Media Research, used under license

In prime time, its decline was not as steep as its sister CNN (12%) or Fox News (16%). That is due at least in part to the success of some of the channel’s opinionated prime-time shows, particularly among young audiences.

At the front of that group is Glenn Beck, a former conservative talk radio personality, who anchors from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. daily. His show grew 119% overall in audience and more than tripled (up 165%) among 25-to-54-year-olds in the fourth quarter of 2006.

Beck is up against some of cable news’ bigger shows (Fox News’s “Fox Report” with Shepard Smith, MSNBC’s “Hardball” with Chris Matthews and CNN’s “Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer). But their fourth quarter gains in audience were no more than 20%.⁸ Beck stands out, in part, because he may be among the most pugnacious conservatives on cable TV, and ideological edge, particularly from the right, is a new identity for Headline News.

Beck’s show is actually the second most popular Headline News show. In first place is the legal talk show “Nancy Grace” (8 p.m. ET). Grace, a lawyer, began making audience inroads when she went on the air in 2005.

Her performance in 2006 was more complicated. The show’s overall audience declined 16% in the fourth quarter while its audience in the 25 to 54 demographic grew 8% (see News Investment).⁹ That might have something to do with competition – MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann airs at the same time and he’s been seeing huge gains among both the 25-to-54-year-olds and over all audience. The drop also came, among other things, as Grace became embroiled in controversy when one of her guests committed suicide after a Grace interview.

Headline News is also attracting viewers in the morning. Its morning show “Robin & Company,” hosted by Robin Meade, has seen a ratings surge, especially among the younger demographic. According to CNN, the show’s ratings in October 2006 showed a 71% increase from the previous year among people 18 to 34. Further, “Robin & Company” gets about 90% of all viewer response to Headline News’s daytime shows, most of which is positive.¹⁰

Cumulative Audience

Another method cable networks use to measure their audience is “Cume,” short for cumulative audience. The term refers to the number of different individual (“unique”) viewers who watch a channel over a fixed period. Viewers are counted as part of a TV channel’s Cume measurement if they tune in for six minutes or longer (they are typically calculated over the course of a month). Like average audience, Cume is measured by Nielsen Media Research.

CNN has historically led in terms of Cume and used the to leverage itself to advertisers — arguing that advertisers can reach a greater number of different consumers through its channel over time, even though its average audience lags significantly behind that of Fox News.

This year, CNN, which provides the Project with data on Cume, released figures only for the final month of the year. According to those numbers, at least, CNN continues its lead.

But the trend lines, again, are strongest for MSNBC. It grew about 27% in December 2006, year-to-year. CNN’s sister channel, Headline News, was next, with a 24% growth in Cume audience.

Cable News Cumulative Audience
Number of Unique Viewers (in 000's)

Source: Nielsen Media Research, data provided by CNN

The Cume numbers also reveal something else. Cume was growing — at least in December. Indeed, all four channels had a higher cume in December 2006 than in 2005. This stands in stark contrast to the average audience trends.

If the December numbers are typical, they suggest that more people tune in to the cable channels now than a year ago, but are not staying as long. It may also say something about the nature of the major news events of 2006 in contrast with years past — the so-called crisis coverage component of cable journalism. That question deserves a closer look.

Crisis Coverage: The Big Stories of 2006

What is happening with crisis coverage on cable?

As noted above, the steeper declines seen in mean audience (as distinct from median) suggest that the cable channels benefited less from crisis coverage in 2006 than in years past.

Over the last decade, the cable channels saw their growth stimulated by major crises. Viewers would come for the big events — often in huge numbers — and many of them would begin to watch the channels more afterwards. Are cable channels now also losing sway in this area? Or was 2006 somehow a slower news year than in years past?

One way to examine those questions is to take the big months of the year, when coverage spiked because of major news events, and compare these spikes to the ones registered during previous crises.

In 2006, the big stories were the summertime crisis in the Middle East in July and August and the mid-term elections in November. (The Middle East crisis overlapped with another major event, the foiled terrorist plot to bomb American planes in London.)

The Middle East crisis and the terrorist threats led to a surge in cable news viewers in August. CNN saw its August 2006 prime-time audience up 19% and its daytime audience up nearly 40% compared with August 2005. The month also saw it generate the largest number of total viewers in the year. MSNBC’s prime-time audience grew just 4% (although daytime was up 36%) compared with August 2005. Fox News actually saw a 29% dip in prime-time viewership, while daytime viewers grew 5%.

November, the month of the mid-term elections, saw no such spikes. There was little growth in viewership in the three channels over November the year before — growing only 10% over October 2006 in prime time, even though the election occurred in the second week of the month and, given the dramatic results, carried on with coverage for weeks after that. In daytime, the channels actually lost about 1% of their viewers.

Compare that to the spikes registered in earlier years. In August 1998, when video of President Bill Clinton’s deposition before a grand jury was released, cable news registered a 71% spike in both daytime and prime-time viewers from the previous month. The hanging-chad elections in November 2000 that ultimately brought George W. Bush to power had everyone riveted to the cable news channels — and registered 91% growth in prime-time viewers and 156% growth in daytime compared to the month before.

Cable News Audience during Big Events

1998 - 2006, Channels Combined, Prime-time Viewers

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Nielsen Media Research, used under license Note: Figures reflect average viewers in respective months

What to make of the smaller spikes in 2006?

Of course it is impossible to conclusively compare different news events in different years. Some analysts, such as Andrew Tyndall and the former CNN correspondent Charles Bierbauer, believe that the crises of 2006 were simply not as compelling, as news events, as those of other recent years. That is certainly possible, perhaps even likely. A mid-term election and a Mid-East crisis may not be news on the same magnitude for Americans as Katrina, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein or September 11.

Nonetheless, given the other declines in 2006 and the growing range of options Americans have for news, it is also possible that the spikes in cable viewership from major events may just become smaller. It’s a question that deserves monitoring.

The Demographics of the Cable News Audience

Who is watching Cable News? Over all, the typical cable news viewer is likely to be male and middle-aged (mean age of 48 years) with a college education.

There are some variations by channel. The average Fox News viewer is about 48 years old as well and earns a higher income, while the average CNN viewer is a year younger, and more likely to have a lower income. The MSNBC viewer is likely to be younger still, but with a better income than CNN. We provide a more complete profile of the cable news audience, and what the demographics might signify, in the Public Attitudes sub-chapter.

Measuring the Audience

Audience trends in television can be measured using either one of two calculations - median or mean (simple average).

The cable channels prefer to calculate their year-to-year ratings by converting the Nielsen ratings data into annual “averages” using the mean. By that accounting, thanks to an enormous but brief spike during big events, the cable news audience can be seen as surging. Yet such “averaging” tends to create a misimpression — the idea that the typical cable audience is very high.

In reality, cable ratings are among the most volatile in journalism, spiking and falling wildly with news events. In most months, there is something closer to a normal base-level cable audience only occasionally punctuated by spikes during major news events. In mathematical terms, that would argue for looking at the median (defined as the middle value) rather than the average.

The statistical methodologist Esther Thorson of the University of Missouri explains the choice of median rather than mean this way: The median is a better indicator of central tendency when there are extremely high or extremely low observations in the distribution. Those greatly influence the mean, but have little effect on the median. In other words, the median is the closest on the average to all of the scores in the distribution. Very high levels of cable viewing during a big event pull the mean too far away from realistic viewing scores. For that reason, the median is the better indicator of typical viewing levels.

For instance, in 2003, when the war in Iraq began, mean viewership numbers showed the cable news business booming — up 34% for daytime and 32% for prime time from the year before. But using the median, or the middle value of the 12 months of that year, the picture that emerged was that cable viewership was basically stable. It showed no growth during the day and a gain of just 3% in prime time. How can that be? The reason is that cable news didn’t retain the audience that it gained during those first weeks of the war. Median was a better reflection of a year in which viewership spiked only for 2 months and then fell back down again.

In 2006, the median numbers actually spell better news for cable channels. Taking the average viewership for 2006 and comparing it to 2005 shows a significant decline in the cable news audience — down 11% for daytime and 12% for prime time. But using the median, we see was a decline of just 4% during the day and 8% in prime time.

Our research team, as well as the staff at the Pew Research Center, believes the median is the fairest way to try to understand the core audience for cable, given the volatility of ratings spikes. The other measurement, mean or simple average, tends to be disproportionately inflated by the spikes and, consequently, also exaggerates any declines in cable audiences when those spikes don’t happen.

Median offers a truer sense of the core or base audience, those people who are watching day in and day out, without ignoring the cumulative effect of the size of the audience that gathers momentarily if extraordinary things happen.

The Mid-Term Elections on Cable

The year 2006 had its share of big stories to reinforce the distinctions between the three main cable news channels. The biggest was the November mid-term elections.

According to Nielsen Media Research, Fox News was the choice for most viewers on Election Day. However, more people aged 25 to 54 — that advertiser-coveted demographic — tuned into CNN.

Between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. on November 7, 2006, Fox News scored an average of three million viewers. CNN was close behind with 2.97 million, followed by MSNBC with 1.95 million. According to the trade publication Broadcasting & Cable, CNN overtook Fox News in the prime demographics. It attracted 1.33 million of the 25-to-54 group, more than Fox News’s 1.25 million.¹¹

For MSNBC, the numbers actually represent a big improvement over previous major events. Indeed, the success it saw during its election coverage seems to have translated into a new strategy. Channel executives like general manager Dan Abrams told TV reporters afterwards they believed that political coverage might just be the niche MSNBC had been looking for (see News Investment).

All three channels had invested heavily in their election night coverage and promoted it vigorously. Each had its marquee anchors up front and brought in a number of high-profile guests and analysts to entice viewers to stay tuned in (see also our Election Night 2006 report).

CNN’s election night special, “America Votes 2006,” was anchored by Wolf Blitzer, Lou Dobbs, Anderson Cooper and Paula Zahn — its full retinue of prime-time stars — from the Time Warner Center in New York. In that sense, the network seemingly used election night as an opportunity to promote its prime-time lineup. The choice of Dobbs, whose program has become more opinion-oriented, as an anchor was sufficiently controversial to prompt an Associated Press story reporting on critics questioning the choice.

CNN also used its new and elaborate digital “news wall” to display real-time information and results. CNN Pipeline, its Internet broadband channel, was used to stream candidate speeches. In another example of non-traditional coverage, the channel also invited leading political bloggers under one roof. Both initiatives, however, experienced some technical difficulties and didn’t create the impression CNN hoped for.

Another special investment in 2006 was “CNN Election Express Yourself,” a trailer tour that traveled across the country. It involved online activities, video portals and online interaction to get people’s opinions on the elections. It also let users access the CNN Pipeline sections and navigate through the special online election section on its Web site, “America Votes 2006.”

MSNBC, which competes on such nights during certain hours against its own sister channel, NBC, tried to create a niche for itself during the election season, touting its intense political coverage in the weeks leading up to the voting. On Election Day, MSNBC’s special, “Decision 2006” was anchored by its cable stars, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann. The talk-show anchors Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough hosted a panel of analysts to discuss the results. It also used NBC correspondents to add weight to their analysis. The anchors Brian Williams, Tim Russert and Andrea Mitchell all did rounds on the cable channel.

MSNBC also went around the country for the mid-term campaign. The popular anchor Chris Matthews took his “Hardball” show to different colleges as part of the channel’s coverage. It invited big-name guests to each of the colleges, which served as the background and audience for each show.

Fox News seemed less crowded on the sets. The veteran anchor Brit Hume led the election special, “You Decide 2006,” with Shepard Smith on the air before and after. Fox News’s chief analyst was Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report, a widely acknowledged expert on Congressional races and co-author of the respected Almanac of American Politics.

Footnotes

1. Andrew Tyndall of ADT research, who consults with the Project for Excellence in Journalism, is not the only one to mention these ideas; many media analysts agree on these needs that cable news satisfies.

2. Daytime is defined by cable news as 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Prime time is defined as 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.

3. In 2006, the Fox News digital network had a unique online audience of 6 million visitors, far behind CNN’s 24 million and MSNBC’s 26 million. See Online Ownership.

4. Nielsen Media Research, Weekday Competitive Program Ranking for December 2006, Obtained from Media Bistro (www.mediabistro.com).

5. Nielsen Media Research figures for Q4 2006 versus Q4 2005 obtained from Media Bistro (www.mediabistro.com)

6. Figures from CNN Press Relations, e-mail correspondence, January 18, 2007

7. “MSNBC was the Only Cable News Network to Gain Viewers in 2006,” MSNBC Press Release, January 3, 2007

8. Nielsen Ratings obtained from Media Bistro.com (www.mediabistro.com) indicate an audience growth of 119% for Glenn Beck. At the same time slot, the Situation Room (CNN) grew 18%, Shepard Smith’s Fox Report (Fox News) dropped 20% and viewership of MSNBC’s Hardball fell 1%.

9. Nielsen Media Research figures for Q4 2006 versus Q4 2005 obtained from Media Bistro (www.mediabistro.com).

10. Kevin Forest Moreau, “Switching Channels,” The Sunday Paper, Georgia, November 2, 2006

11. John M. Higgins, “CNN Wins Election Demos; Fox Leads in Total Viewers,” Broadcasting & Cable, November 8, 2006

Economics

Though 2006 was a difficult year for cable news in terms of audience, it was a better one financially. The reason is that the economics of cable news are not entirely tied to annual audience trends. They are connected to multi-year contracts cable channels have with cable systems that distribute their content. After Fox News renewed its contracts in 2006 and began to reap the benefits of a decade of growth, the economics of cable news are poised for some important changes.

Five major economic trends stand out for 2006:

• Fox News was expected to overtake CNN as the profit leader in cable for the first time, with only more growth projected for the future.
• The reason, in part, is that Fox News began to sign new contracts that tripled the license fees it received from cable providers. The new contracts, replacing the 10-year deals it signed when it launched in 1996, put the cable news channel into the highest levels of subscription fees for the first time.
• Meanwhile, the other cable channels also expected to see profits jump.
• For all Fox News’s momentum, CNN, whose financial figures are combined with Headline News, still had the largest revenues.
• MSNBC, meanwhile, was projected to generate meaningful profits for the first time.

While the numbers are impressive — particularly Fox News’s financial milestones — they do not come without questions. First, Fox News was expected to overtake CNN in profits in 2005 as well, but fell short, so the accuracy of projections remains a question.¹ The second is more long-term. With all channels losing audience in 2006, has the cable industry as a whole — beyond just news — begun a downward curve?

The number of cable households that are subscribers has barely increased in years, inching just 1% or so every year in the last five.² With no new audience, advertisers aren’t paying what they used to. Cable networks are no longer able to get the significantly higher rates they are accustomed to, and ended up with only a 2% gain in the 2006 advertising “upfront” period.³ In addition, the slowdown in advertising revenue and growth means each network or channel spends more on self-promotion to maintain its position.⁴

So far, the industry has stayed ahead of those downturns and convinced analysts it can weather the storm. According to projections for 2005-2010, basic cable (beyond just the news channels) will see a 78% growth in revenues despite the economies of scale and leveling-off of subscribers.⁵ The cable news channels have been faring equally well in projections.

Profits

By the bottom-line measure, profits, cable news is doing well indeed, and analysts see more of the same in the immediate future.

Kagan Research, the media research firm, projected that the four cable news channels would earn $699 million in pre-tax profits in 2006. That would represent a jump of 32% from 2005, when they generated $529 million.

Fox News was projected to become the most profitable channel, overtaking CNN for the first time. Kagan expected Fox News’s operating profits to grow more than 30%, to $326 million, from $244 million in 2005.

CNN, whose figures include Headline News, was projected to see a growth of almost 14%, to $310 million from $272 million in 2005.

While MSNBC isn’t anywhere near the level of the other two channels, its estimates continue to be optimistic. Kagan expected profits at MSNBC to rise to $64 million in 2006 — a leap of almost 400% from the $13 million it made the previous year, and a sign that the news channel will, at long last, become a contributor of some value to NBC television’s bottom line. One caveat is that MSNBC has fallen short of projections before.

Cable News Profitability

1997 - 2006, by Channel

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Kagan Research, LLC, a division of Jupiter Kagan Inc.

One significant trend that emerges from those numbers is that Fox News has been steadily narrowing the gap in profits with CNN every year, and at a much faster rate than analysts projected. In 2004, Fox News’s profits had been projected to be $97 million behind CNN’s, and in 2005 some $56 million behind. Actual figures show the gap was $58 million in 2004 and $28 million in 2005.

Thus, even if the gains in 2006 are more modest than projected, Fox News has achieved in ten years what it took CNN 25 years to accomplish.

It should be emphasized, again, that financial data for 2006 are estimated or projected, since actual annual figures for a calendar year come out six months later. Comparing actual 2005 figures against projections (in last year’s Annual Report) shows how far off the mark projections can be.

Kagan Research’s projections for profits are a case in point. Fox News made about $4 million less than projected ($244 million rather than $248 million), a slight variation. MSNBC, in contrast, made only half of what analysts expected it to — $13 million, not the projected $27 million. CNN’s actual earnings fell short by about $30 million of what it was projected to make — a profit of $272 million, not the projected $304 million.

Revenues

One reason for Fox News’s strength is that in tandem with profits, revenues are also rising rapidly. According to the annual profiles released by Kagan in July 2006, Fox News's revenues were projected to grow 23.4%, nearly identical to the 23% of 2005. That is nearly triple the projected revenue growth at CNN. In dollars that would come to $754 million, up from $610 million in 2005.

CNN and Headline News, on the other hand, continue to bring in the highest revenues in cable news, but the growth in recent years has slowed to single digits.⁶ Kagan’s projections for CNN include both CNN and CNN Headline News because they are sold as a package to advertisers and distributors. They do not include the revenues CNN earns from its other operations, such as CNN Radio, CNN International or NewsSource, its subscription service that provides newsfeeds to local stations.⁷

The two channels were projected to bring in $985 million in total revenue in 2006, a 7.6% increase over the previous year’s $915 million (a 9% increase over the year before that).

MSNBC, meanwhile, continued to lag well behind the other two channels in financial performance. Kagan Research projected MSNBC would take in $269 million in revenues in 2006, a 7% jump over the previous year. (In 2005, incidentally, its revenues fell short of projections: $251 million against a projection of $261 million).

One can also get a sense of the accuracy of projections for revenues from the actual results of 2005.

Cable News Revenues
2005 vs. 2006, in $ millions

Source: Kagan Research, LLC, a division of JupiterKagan Inc.

Seen against projections, CNN fared better than analysts expected. Fox News, on the other hand, falling short by about $4 million, and MSNBC’s were about $10 million lower than projected.

Revenue Streams

To understand all this, it is important to recognize how cable economics work. Unlike broadcast television, which depends entirely on advertising, cable news has two revenue sources of basically equal weight — subscriber fees, paid through the cable systems, and ad revenues. That is why cable companies can make substantial revenue and profit with much smaller audiences than broadcasters.

A breakdown of the two tells the story of where cable news’ economics are headed.

License Fee or Subscriber Revenues

The less obvious revenue stream in cable, license fees, is the money paid by the cable systems to carry the channel. These are long-term deals negotiated in advance on a per-subscriber basis irrespective of how many subscribers actually end up watching the channel. If a cable company enlarges its audience, it can renegotiate those license fees upward when contracts come up for renewal.

The year 2006 marked the 10th anniversary of Fox News and the beginning of its process of renewing license-fee contracts. When the channel launched in 1996, many of the 10-year contracts it signed gave the channel 25 cents for each subscriber, roughly half what CNN makes.

All through 2005 and 2006, Fox News executives were quoted as saying they would like a revised rate of $1 a subscriber — an unheard-of increase in fees in the industry. While analysts believed that such a hike was unrealistic, Fox News executives used the channel’s Nielsen performance in arguing for it.

Their confidence has borne fruit. Fox News managed to triple its current fees in the first of its renewal deals, with Cablevision, currently the sixth-largest cable operator in the U.S. After much speculation in trade magazines,⁸ the two sides agreed on a rate “upwards of 75 cents per subscriber” in October 2006, according to Broadcasting & Cable.⁹

Their new contracts are five-year deals. Initial media reports said that Fox News was negotiating for cable systems to carry both the news channel and its proposed new business channel (see News Investment). There was also talk of retransmission fees for the Fox broadcast network. Eventually, however, trade magazines reported that the final deals did not include carrying the business channel or the retransmission fees.¹⁰

The new rate makes Fox News one of the top five most expensive cable networks in terms of license-fees. At the top is ESPN, which charges $2.96 per subscriber per month, followed by TNT at 89 cents, Disney Channel at 79 cents, Fox News and then USA at 60 cents. CNN currently gets 44 cents.¹¹

The Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen, who had expected Fox News to get 50 cents a subscriber, estimated that the new rates could give Fox News $2.4 billion in affiliate revenue between 2007 and 2010. This represented a jump of 23%, or $450 million, more than the projections that were made before the deal.¹²

Kagan Research, whose 2007 projections were released before the deal and don’t take into account the renegotiations, estimated Fox News would earn 30 cents per subscriber in 2007 and earn subscriber revenues of $330 million. But based on the new rates, there is bound to be a huge difference.¹³

The October deal with Cablevision was followed by similar deals with DirecTV and National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC). It also set the stage for future renewals, which promise to be just as fiercely negotiated. Fox News now has to deal with operators such as Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Comcast. Peter Chernin, President and COO of News Corp., was quoted in September 2006 as saying he expected “tough, tough, tough negotiations” with cable operators.

Cable News Monthly Revenues Per Subscriber

1997 - 2006, by Channel

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Kagan Research, LLC, a division of Jupiter Kagan Inc.

Indeed, the Fox News deal, to some degree, highlights the love-hate relationship between cable operators and cable channels. Such negotiations over license fees and contracts have become increasingly combative. Operators argue that while news channels are ubiquitous in cable, they are actually watched by relatively few of the subscribers and that with their audiences now declining, Fox News doesn’t warrant the kind of license fees it is asking for.

Another consequence of the deals is likely to be a re-enactment of the CNN vs. Fox News rivalry on the economic front. CNN, losing audience to Fox News the past six years, could face some stiff resistance from cable operators when their current deals expire, especially because the operators are resigning themselves to the huge increases they will have to pay Fox News.

Cable News Revenues & Expenses

2006

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Kagan Research, LLC, a division of Jupiter Kagan Inc.

Kagan estimates CNN will take in $515 million in subscriber revenues in 2007, at its current rate of 45 cents for each subscriber. That would be an increase of $31 million over its projected 2006 revenues of $484 million.

MSNBC suffers from both the lowest subscriber rate and the fewest subscribers. At a rate of 15 cents apiece, it is projected to earn $162 million in 2007, up from the $152 million it was expected to earn in 2006.

Advertising Revenues

The second revenue stream for cable news, of course, is advertising. Advertising revenues in cable are based on whether the channel appeals to a higher-income target audience.

The appeal of cable news has always been that it attracts well-educated, relatively affluent viewers, an audience with purchasing power that advertisers want. This niche positioning largely determines advertising rates. And while their rates can’t be as high as those of the broadcast networks because of smaller audience than broadcast networks, cable news channels compete well on rates with general-interest cable channels such as sports or entertainment, which boast much larger audiences.

So how did the channels fare in 2006? Fox News was expected to reach another fiscal milestone. If estimates prove accurate, it will have overtaken CNN for the first time in advertising revenue.

According to projections by Kagan Research, Fox News was expected to take in $454 million in 2006 from advertising. That would top CNN’s projected $424 million (and far exceed MSNBC’s $114 million).

It would also represent a 31% growth over 2005, more than twice that of CNN (13%) and more than four times that of MSNBC (7%).

Net Ad Revenue of Cable Channels
2000 - 2006, in $ millions

Source: Kagan Research, LLC, a division of JupiterKagan Inc.
Note: Net Ad Revenue refers to revenue generated after discounting the commission that goes to ad agencies.

There is however, at least one big caveat. Projections for 2005 indicated a similar leap for Fox News that never materialized. In that year, Fox News was expected to take in $336 million, scraping past CNN’s expected $335 million. But actual results showed that CNN did better than expected and bought in $376 million in 2005. Even though Fox News took in $345 million, it remained almost $31 million shy of CNN.

What’s more, other analysts think Kagan’s projections are overly optimistic for Fox News. According to a report by Jessica Reif Cohen of Merrill Lynch in September 2006, Fox News’s ad revenue for 2006 was expected to be $421 million and to increase at an average of just 4% a year in the next four years.¹⁴

How is it that CNN can charge ad rates close to those of Fox News with a much smaller audience? The answer, as we have noted in earlier reports, is that Madison Avenue apparently continues to covet CNN’s audience type.

CNN’s historic lead in advertising revenue can be attributed to both familiarity and performance. It commands a substantial cumulative audience and remains the channel of choice for breaking news events, making it appealing for advertisers who want a guaranteed audience.

How long that might continue is an open question.

Footnotes

1. While various sources offer projections and estimates of economic data on the cable television industry, the differences among them aren’t particularly large. As a consequence, we generally cite one source here for the sake of clarity, one consistent yardstick rather than many variations on the same theme. On those occasions where estimates vary widely, we occasionally offer an alternative. To arrive at an accurate trend over time, we have relied on data from Kagan Research in this report. Kagan is one of the most experienced media and communications analysis and research firms in the U.S., widely cited in the general press and in trade publications. Kagan provides us economic profiles breaking out the cable news channels from the overall company profiles.

2. See the 2006 Cable Audience section

3. “Upfront” is an advertising term for an early buying season (the upfront season) when advertisers purchase ad spots on TV shows for the coming broadcast year. They buy the spots in bulk to get lower rates and to ensure that their ads will be seen by enough viewers. Rates for such spots are calculated based on a show’s average audience and ratings.

4. John Higgins, “Why the Cable Buzz is Gone,” Broadcasting & Cable, September 11, 2006

5. Kagan Research estimates in July 2006 indicated that basic cable TV revenue in 2010 would be $53.2 billion, up from $29.9 billion in 2005. Robert Marich, “Profit Margins at Basic Cable TV Nets still climbing Despite Growing Pains,” Kagan Insights Newsletter, Jupiter Research, July 11, 2006

6. By way of comparison, CNN’s revenues in 2005 were $200 million more than those of Fox News and $700 million more than MSNBC’s.

7. Other CNN operations include CNN en Espanol, CNN en Espanol Radio, CNN.com, CNN Money.com, CNN Studentnews.com, CNN Airport Network, CNN to go, and CNN Mobile. (Source: Time Warner Web site).

8. Fox News put out a legal notice in September 2006 warning Cablevision customers they might lose the channel in October because of contract complications. Rupert Murdoch made things personal when he was quoted in trade magazines warning off Cablevision’s head, Chuck Dolan.

9. John M. Higgins, “Fox News Gets Big Hike in Cablevision Renewal,” Broadcasting & Cable, October 16, 2006

10. Michael Learmonth & John Dempsey, “Fox’s Triple Play,” Variety, October 16, 2006

11. Kagan Research; Also Michael Learmonth & John Dempsey, “Fox’s Triple Play,” Variety, October 16, 2006

12. David Goetzl, “Merrill Lynch: Fox, Cablevision Deal Means 25% Rev Jump for Net,” MediaPost, October 18, 2006

13. The new subscriber fees, on the cable systems that have renewed their contracts with Fox News, are effective starting the month they were reached (either October or December, 2006). Thus, their impact will not really be visible until the 2007 fiscal year.

14. The report by Cohen predicts that Fox News’s ad revenue would reach about $502 million in 2010, an average increase of 4%. David Goetzl, “Merrill Lynch: Fox, Cablevision Deal Means 25% Rev Jump for Net,” MediaPost, October 18, 2006.

Ownership

The basic ownership picture of Cable changed little in 2006. News Corp., the company managed and controlled financially by Rupert Murdoch, owns Fox News. General Electric, the corporate conglomerate that owns NBC and Vivendi Universal studios, owns MSNBC. CNN is a part of the Time Warner-AOL empire.

Below the surface, however, subtle changes tell a dynamic story. When it comes to management, MSNBC is the channel gearing up for the most change in 2007. After some top-level changes in 2006, it is likely to see shake-ups throughout the organization in 2007 as it moves facilities to New York near NBC News.

At Fox News, Rupert Murdoch celebrated the channel’s 10th anniversary and strengthened his hold on the parent company, News Corp. At CNN, Ted Turner did the opposite — removing himself from the board of Time Warner and breaking his ties with the news channel he created.

MSNBC

Cable’s perennial third-placer finisher in 2006 saw three significant changes. With the departure of its co-owner, Microsoft, NBC and its parent General Electric (GE) gained more freedom to make changes. GE then announced a series of cuts and reshuffling throughout NBC and MSNBC, including closing down the news channel’s New Jersey headquarters and moving operations to NBC’s Rockefeller Center offices in Manhattan. And MSNBC put new personnel in charge of the news channel, which seems to have hit upon a new style and brand — politics and opinion.

All of that began at the end of 2005 when NBC Television took over sole charge of the channel after 10 years of joint ownership with Microsoft. It was described as a move to revitalize the channel and align it more closely to NBC News, according to NBC’s president, Steve Capus.

That began to take shape in October 2006, when NBC Universal, the parent division of NBC television (which includes both MSNBC and NBC News) announced what it labeled “NBC 2.0” to assure future growth and to “exploit the opportunities of the changing media landscape.”

The initiative coincided with the release of GE’s third-quarter figures, where profits were lower than expected (6% increase) partly because of NBC Universal’s 10% drop in profits. That provided the context for what turned out to be cuts mostly at NBC Universal. According to the company, the reductions would be “shouldered by NBC U’s key profit center: news at its national broadcast and cable networks, and local owned-and-operated TV stations.”¹

According to various media reports, the company planned to trim the news division budget through attrition, buyouts, layoffs and the elimination of duplicate newsgathering processes. The official press statement said management would be cutting about 700 jobs (5% of the total workforce) by 2007. But Capus said the cable channel would not be targeted for heavy cuts.

One change that was clear was closer integration through physical proximity. As part of the 2.0 initiative, NBC announced it would move MSNBC operations — 600 personnel — out of its Secaucus, N.J., headquarters and shift it to New York (with NBC News) and Englewood Cliffs, N.J. (with CNBC). NBC said its aim was to create one digital hub for news, and pool reporters from all the various news businesses.² It was also, however, one way to save money.

The changes followed a reshuffle in top management earlier in the year. In May 2006, Rick Kaplan, the veteran from ABC and CNN, stepped down as president and general manager of MSNBC less than three years after taking over the struggling channel. Media critics attributed Kaplan’s exit to his lack of programming success, especially with the shows he created (see News Investment). He was, however, credited with building morale within the channel after an era of program shuffling and newsroom turmoil under his predecessor, Erik Sorenson, and with creating a better relationship with NBC News.

Kaplan was succeeded by Phil Griffin, who was appointed President of MSNBC in June 2006. Griffin is a successful newsroom veteran at both NBC and MSNBC, where he was most recently senior vice president of prime-time programming. He also continues to oversee NBC’s morning “Today Show,” which he has led since 1995.

Griffin in turn named Dan Abrams, the channel’s legal-affairs reporter and anchor, as general manager, though Abrams remains a legal correspondent and will contribute to both NBC and MSNBC. His promotion was a surprise not just because he had no management experience, but because cable networks rarely put news anchors in their executive ranks. For one thing, TV anchors historically have more job security than general managers and vice presidents. Media speculation was that the appointment was a result of his familiarity with both the channel and with Steve Capus and Phil Griffin. All three have been involved with MSNBC from the early years. Abrams has been with MSNBC since 1997 and has been the anchor of “The Abrams Report” since 2001. Capus was executive producer of an MSNBC prime-time newscast in 1999 and in charge of daytime programming when the channel launched in 1996.

According to MSNBC, Abrams’s immediate goals were to build on the success of the channel’s two most popular shows, Keith Olbermann’s Countdown and Chris Matthews’s Hardball (see more in Audience).

By fall, it was clear that meant trying to brand MSNBC around politics, and with a lineup that was now heavily influenced by opinion and talk in prime time (Tucker Carlson, Matthews, Olbermann, and Joe Scarborough are all political talk). With a pivotal mid-term election, the strategy seemed to work, especially in prime time (see Audience). The press began to write promisingly of the idea. As Variety put it, politics might help bring “cultural relevance to a channel that has long struggled to find its niche.”³

In part, the move suggests that Abrams and Griffin recognize the growing difficulty of building a news channel around breaking headlines, or what we have called news on demand. Creating a brand around a subject area, the way ESPN does around sports, or CNBC does around business, is a logical alternative. CNN may also have helped create the opportunity. Its changes, such as cancelling its Inside Politics program and to a lesser extent its cancellation of Crossfire, moved it more explicitly away from politics. CNN certainly devotes time to the subject, but its franchise is less defined. Fox News’s viewership in this area, in turn, is decidedly more conservative, potentially leaving another niche.

As 2007 began, the strategy still appeared to be working. In January, MSNBC drew in 525,000 viewers in prime time, an impressive increase of nearly 53% over its numbers for the same month last year (344,000). That was far better than the gains made by CNN (13%) or Fox News (9%).

News Corp. and the Fox News Channel

Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of News Corp., had reason to toast Fox News and its chairman, Roger Ailes, during the 10th-anniversary celebrations of the channel in October, 2006. The Fox News channel continued to be a News Corp. star performer, not just in its category (cable networks) but among all the U.S. operations of the media conglomerate (see Audience and Economics).⁴

Fox News turned 10 on October 7, 2006. Proving forecasters and skeptics wrong, the network overtook CNN — the biggest name in cable news at the time — in audience within six years of its launch.

When Murdoch created the news network in 1996, he marketed it as an antidote to what he termed the left-wing news media. In an interview with the Financial Times in October 2006, Murdoch reflected on the channel’s beginnings and said Fox News had changed the political equation in country, because it “has given room to both sides, whereas only one side had it before.”⁵ Murdoch hired Ailes, former president of CNBC and a former political strategist for the Republicans, to head the network. Ailes hasn’t just changed the style of TV news presentation, he has challenged existing TV news agendas.

Undoubtedly the force behind the channel, he brought with him not just a talent for marketing and political hard-sell, but knowledge of television and a no-nonsense style of leadership. He combined these with the belief, more hinted at than explicit in Fox News marketing, that American viewers would empathize with the idea that mainstream media were tilted to the left. His slogans, “Fair and balanced,” and “We Report, You Decide,” implied that those were not qualities available in other media.

Ailes also did something else. He succeeded (where CNN rarely did) in creating distinct programs that people would tune in to — so-called appointment programming in TV language. Bill O’Reilly’s program was distinct from Hannity and Colmes, which in turn was different from Brit Hume’s, and that in turn from Neil Cavuto’s. There were differences in style and tone, and different anchors played, in a sense, different characters.

There was also a new look with graphics, sound, editing, pacing and more. The combination of a polished look, populist language and opinion-laden journalism has hit the target with many viewers.

Even a former president of MSNBC, Erik Sorenson, admits, “Fox News convinced millions… that Fox’s reporting was indeed fair and balanced, when compared with CNN and broadcast news.”

The channel took off in 2001, after the September 11 terrorist attacks and during the war in Afghanistan, when it took on an outspoken pro-American posture. Its position — which implied that the other news channels weren’t pro-American — created a strong and loyal viewer base.

The channel’s rise has also been tied to news-watching’s becoming partisan. According to the latest Pew survey on news consumption, Republicans are increasingly watching Fox News, while Democrats stick to CNN.⁶

Despite being the biggest cable news channel in the U.S. and part of one the largest media conglomerates in the world, News Corp., Fox News has succeeded by playing off the impression that it is a lonely young upstart challenging the rest of the colossal, liberally biased media.

When asked directly, the network vigorously denies any charges of political or ideological bias. It has had to constantly defend its credibility as a straight news source. A recent example occurred in an October 2006 interview on Fox News Sunday with Bill Clinton — when he flared up and accused the host, Chris Wallace, of doing “a conservative hit job on me.”

Fox News executives say their channel succeeds — and gets attacked — only because it offers a different perspective. Roger Ailes was quoted in USA Today as saying that the liberals “hate (Fox News) for coming on the scene and… making the people look at both sides of issues.”⁷ Shepard Smith, one of Fox News’ marquee news anchors, argues that critics need to recognize that the channel offers two kinds of shows. On one hand are the talk shows that reflect their hosts’ views, he says, but all the others, including the two news reports he anchors, are straight news reporting. Ailes concurred, arguing that Fox News’s critics “mash (opinion shows and the journalism) together and act as if Sean Hannity is doing the evening news, which is just nonsense.”⁸

This report is not an attempt to settle the issue of Fox News’s fairness and balance, but to assess its position in the marketplace at its 10-year mark. Whatever its critics might argue, there is no denying that Fox News has made newsrooms re-think their business, both in format and content. The success of Fox News’s talk shows has led to opinion journalism’s becoming almost staple fare in the TV news business; notable competitors with Fox being Keith Olbermann on MSNBC and Lou Dobbs on CNN. Olbermann’s recent ratings climb has coincided, indeed, with his on-air crusade against the Fox News talk-show host Bill O’Reilly.

The success of Fox News has also sparked off debates on whether objective news is even relevant in a time when ordinary Americans give vent to their opinions through the Internet and blogs.

But while his American news channel in 2006 gave him few worries, Murdoch had a close shave with his stake in the parent News Corp. itself. For much of the year, Murdoch was locked in a battle with Liberty Media Group’s chairman, John Malone, over the controlling interest in News Corp. The battle was finally settled in December when News Corp. reached an agreement with Liberty Media to ensure Murdoch’s control of his company.⁹

Liberty and News Corp. were equally stubborn negotiators, and, as analysts had predicted, they compromised. The final deal, which will come into effect later in 2007, stipulates that Liberty will acquire News Corp.’s 39% stake in DirecTV, three regional Fox sports networks and $550 million in cash.¹⁰ In return, Malone will retire his 19% voting stake in News Corp. by selling it back to the company. Malone’s stake has roughly the same value as the DirecTV stake and other assets he gets from Murdoch, making the deal an even swap.

The final deal also raises the Murdoch family share in News Corp. to about 40%, making it the biggest voting stake in the company.¹¹ Murdoch and his two sons currently own about 30% of News Corp., giving them managing control of the company, and it is widely reported that Murdoch hopes to keep control within the family.¹² So it was no surprise he reacted strongly when that control was threatened.

The fact that News Corp.’s share price was up and earnings rose 19% in the fourth quarter of 2006 would undoubtedly have bolstered Murdoch’s claim that he knew best how to run the company.¹³ In addition, he had the public support of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, who owns a 5.7% stake in News Corp. The measure helped protect the Murdoch family’s control of News Corp. until a deal was reached, and also helped them avoid a lengthy battle in court, where the dispute would have ended up if the deal was not agreed on in time.

Another, smaller footnote regarding Murdoch’s activities in the U.S. was the setback his publishing company, Harper Collins, experienced in December 2006. It attempted to publish and market a book entitled “If I Did It” by the ex-football player O. J. Simpson, acquitted in 1995 of killing his wife. The plan was harshly criticized and the book had to be withdrawn.

“If I Did It” was heavily marketed before is scheduled launch, including promotion of an interview to be aired on Fox TV stations with Simpson himself on November 27 and November 29, 2006 — two of the final three nights of the November sweeps, when ratings are watched closely to set local advertising rates. The interview and the book faced immediate outrage, both among the public and in the media (including local Fox affiliate stations and Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly). Murdoch had to personally step up to say the company had made a mistake and issue an apology.

Time Warner Company & CNN

The year 2006 saw CNN’s founder and Time Warner’s most prominent personality, Ted Turner, break his final ties with the company.

In February 2006, Turner announced he would not be standing for re-election to Time Warner’s board of directors at the annual meeting; he officially said goodbye in May 2006. He remains Time Warner’s largest individual shareholder, with 33 million shares, but has been cutting back on his holdings.

Turner’s decision to step away comes 11 years after he sold his cable company, Turner Broadcasting Networks, to Time Warner, and 26 years after he helped launch CNN.¹⁴ His effective departure from operational involvement, however, had come earlier, with the merger in 2000 of Time Warner and AOL. Now, his departure from even the board of Time Warner marks the formal end to a career at the Turner companies in which he stands as a pioneer in the latter half of the 20 th century in televised American news, entertainment and sports.

Tuner was the first to see the potential of cable as a viable alternative to the broadcast networks and to make the potential a reality both technically and economically. Leo Hindrey, former head of TCI cable, lauded him as a visionary. “Without CNN, the cable industry would never have evolved as it did. The rest of us were putting in wires. Ted gave us something to watch.”

He is credited with pioneering the use of satellites to distribute ad-supported cable channels nationwide, which had never been tried before. Turner was also responsible for introducing the dual revenue streams for cable: advertising revenues and, particular to cable, subscriber revenues from cable distributors (see Economics).

And while he may not have grasped the potential of the Internet, he did introduce television viewers to an on-demand media world when he launched the 24-hour news channel CNN, effectively weaning viewers away from the notion of fixed schedules for news.

Ted Turner had long played a prominent role in Time Warner’s decisions, but in recent years had complained that he was being sidelined. In a shakeup in 2000, just before Time Warner merged with AOL, the CEO at the time, Gerald Levin, had relieved Turner of most of his responsibilities.

He became increasingly vocal in his disagreements with Time Warner, and was even quoted as saying his decision to merge with the conglomerate was the “biggest mistake of my life.” His most recent decision follows his resignation as vice-chairman of Time Warner in 2003, a post he had held since the 1996 merger.¹⁵

Footnotes

1. Anne Becker, “NBC U: More with Less,” Broadcasting & Cable, October 23, 2006; Online at: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6383679.html

2. NBC News, the network’s local owned & operated news stations, MSNBC TV, CNBC, Telemundo and Telemundo affiliates.

3. Michael Learmonth, “MSNBC Seizes Election Mandate: Cable News Channel Rides Political Wave,” Variety, November 19, 2006. See also Howard Kurtz, “For MSNBC, Time to Get Political,” Washington Post, November 20, 2006.

4. “News Corp. doesn't report financial results for the Fox News Channel, but says it is one of the biggest parts of the fast-growing cable-networks division. The division reported operating income of $864 million for the year ended June 30.” Julia Angwin, “After Riding High With Fox News, Murdoch Aide Has Harder Slog,” Wall Street Journal, October 3 2006.

5. “Interview Transcript: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes,” Financial Times, October 6, 2006; online at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/5b77af92-548c-11db-901f-0000779e2340.html

6. “Online Papers Modestly Boost Newspaper Readership,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, July 30, 2006; online at: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=1067

7. Peter Johnson, “10 Years Later, Fox News Turns up the Cable Volume,” USA Today, October 1, 2006

8. Matea Gold, “Up Next, Wrangling Respect,” Los Angeles Times, October 8, 2006

9. “News, Liberty May Trade Stakes,” Los Angeles Times, December 7, 2006

10. Richard Siklos, “Murdoch and Malone Find a Way to Make Up,” New York Times, December 7, 2006

11. Julia Angwin, “News Corp. is Poised to Regain Liberty’s Stake,” Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2006

12. Rupert Murdoch has two sons. James Murdoch, the younger son, is currently CEO of BSB, their British broadcasting group. Lachlan Murdoch, the older one, was made deputy CEO of News Corp. in 2000 in what was seen as a move to groom him to take over his father’s role. In 2006, however, he suddenly quit his executive role in the company and moved to Australia. Murdoch’s succession is now open to speculation.

13. Seth Sutel, “News Corp. 4th-quarter earnings rise 19% to $852 million on radio sale, cable gains,” AP, August 8, 2006

14. Time Warner was created in 1990 by the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications. That company acquired Ted Turner’s Turner Broadcasting System in 1996. It merged with AOL in 2000, and was known as Time Warner-AOL until 2003.

15. Turner now concentrates on his philanthropic works, such as the UN Foundation and Nuclear Threat Initiative.

News Investment

As media platforms proliferate and evolve, cable news networks are faced with growing pressures to stay relevant, and have to go beyond just producing TV journalism. Not only must they improve their existing content, but like other media they must increasingly compete with other kinds of journalism, online, on mobile devices, with text, audio and more. Cable’s great historic advantage, immediacy, is no longer the province of cable alone.

Against that background, these developments stood out in 2006:

• Fox News appears to be continuing to increase investment in its news operation at a higher rate than its competitors.
• CNN, along with its sister channel, CNN Headline News, after scaling back earlier in the decade, is increasing its investment, too, but more slowly.¹
• MSNBC, which has been cutting back on its operations for the previous two years, was projected to see expenses grow in 2006, but that was before the announcement by GE of its new NBC 2.0 program, which is tallying up major cutbacks throughout the news division.
• It is less clear how much of each channel’s investment is going into reporters and producers — newsgathering boots on the ground — and how much is going elsewhere.
• The trend toward opinion journalism, one of the elements of Fox News’s success, appears to be strengthening among its rivals. CNN, CNN Headline News and MSNBC all invested more heavily in promoting opinionated personalities.

Investing Back and Preparing for the Future

There are two ways of analyzing a station’s financial investment in the news product. The first is to look at all the money a company spends to operate a station. That amount, total expenses, includes salaries and capital expenditures on technology and machinery, as well as the specific costs attributed to different programs.

The second way of looking at expenses is to identify the part attributable to specific programs, termed programming expenses. That includes the costs of either buying material from others or producing it in-house. This second category deserves a closer look.

Programming Expenses

Projections for 2006 indicate that the three main news channels will have spent up to two-thirds of their overall expenses on news programming. At MSNBC, programming was expected to make up 74% of all expenses. Fox News’s share was 63%, while CNN was expected to invest about 54% of its expenses in programming. The numbers represent a slight growth for MSNBC and Fox News from the previous year and a decline for CNN.²

While CNN devotes the smallest percent of its total expenses to the newsroom, it is still at the top when it comes to sheer dollars. Its projected newsroom spending for 2006 was $346 million, up from $330 million in 2005 (a 5.7% increase). One reason the number is higher is it reflects both CNN and CNN Headline News.

Fox News was expected to spend roughly $75 million less than CNN in 2006 ($271 million in programming expenses), but that represented almost a 23% rise from $221 million in 2005, the biggest percentage growth among all the three competitors.

MSNBC, meanwhile, was projected to spend by far the least, $153 million in 2006, a 10% rise from the previous year ($139 million).

Those projections, however, were released by Kagan Research before the changes in ownership and restructuring at NBC Television (see Ownership). Actual figures might not reflect the optimistic projections. If media reports are to be believed, the shakeups in NBC News, CNBC and MSNBC newsgathering resources are bound to mean some cutbacks in programming costs.

Cable News Programming Expenses

1997 - 2006, by Channel

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Kagan Research, LLC, a division of Jupiter-Kagan Inc. CNN figures include CNN Headline News

Total Expenses

When other expenses are added in (such as salaries and capital expenditures on equipment and facilities), Fox News is expected to increase expenses nearly 17% (compared with the 23% increase in revenues). That is about the same growth in expenses the channel saw in 2005 (16%). In dollar terms, Fox News is expected to spend $428 million in 2006, up from $367 million in 2005.

CNN’s total expenses were projected to increase almost 5%, to $675 million, up from $643 million the year before, on revenue growth of 8%. That means CNN will spend about 69% of its revenues to cover expenses, as opposed to 70% in 2005. The share it puts back is more than Fox News but much less than MSNBC.

MSNBC, meanwhile, seemed to be cutting costs in 2006. If the projections are correct, MSNBC would have cut expenses by 14% during the year on revenue growth of 7%. MSNBC has been cutting costs for the last three years, according to the data, but these cutbacks are significantly higher. The channel had cutbacks of 3% in 2005 and 5% in 2004.

Given its lower base, expenses eat up a considerably higher percentage of MSNBC’s revenue. In 2006, MSNBC was expected to have spent a total of $205 million, about three-fourths (76%) of its total revenue.³

Cable News Expenses
2005 vs. 2006, in $ millions

Source: Kagan Research, LLC, a division of JupiterKagan Inc.

How do those expenses play out on the ground in terms of newsroom sizes and operations? Are those elements growing, or is the money going into promotion, salaries for hosts, sets, and show costs? That is harder to know, and increasingly the news channels are not saying.

CNN is clearly the largest operation, with 11 domestic bureaus and 26 international ones. Those numbers reflect no change from a year earlier. But finding much more than that, for the moment, is difficult. The network did not provide its staffing numbers, but for the latest year for which we have data, 2004, it had roughly 4,000 employees (see our 2005 Annual Report).

Fox News appears to be building. The channel ended 2006 with 10 bureaus in the U.S. and 6 abroad, according to the Los Angeles Times reporter Matea Gold.⁴ The number overseas doubled from the three it had at the end of 2005, in London, Paris and Jerusalem. Channel executives were also reported to be planning to build their international coverage by partnering with other international news organizations or broadening their pool of freelancers.⁵ But getting a full scope of Fox’s investment is also difficult. Like CNN, the channel did not offer staffing numbers, but for the latest year for which we have estimates, 2004, it had 1,250 employees in its news operation.

At MSNBC, the trend lines are probably not promising. With its parent company cutting back, and the network still struggling to build audience, it had begun cutting costs at least two years earlier. MSNBC relies on NBC News’ bureaus domestically and worldwide. Those include 15 international bureaus and seven bureaus in the U.S. As of December 2006, it had a staff of 600 dedicated to the cable operation, according to its PR department.⁶ But the news channel can also turn to NBC personnel for content.

Changes on the Air and Behind the Scenes

The declines in viewership, slowdown in growth of profits and growing competition from new media all represent challenges for cable news. One way the industry appears to be responding is by changing programming line-ups. All three channels fiddled with their programs and on-air faces in 2006. The impact of these changes, though, remains to be seen.

CNN

In the search for a successful programming strategy to counter Fox News, CNN made numerous changes in 2006.

Those began first thing in the morning, a time slot where CNN lags behind both Fox News and the broadcast network morning shows. CNN’s American Morning became an hour shorter starting in 2007 (6 a.m. to 9 a.m.) just a year after it had been expanded to four hours. That makes it the same length as Fox News’s more popular “Fox & Friends.” Trade magazines speculated that CNN may also hope to attract morning network TV viewers in the wake of all the changes in the broadcast morning shows with the departure of Charles Gibson and Katie Couric to evening news (see Network TV Audience).

In daytime — between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. — CNN merged its two programs, CNN Live Today and Live From, into one long news block called CNN Newsroom. CNN’s longtime anchor, Daryn Kagan, left the channel in September 2006. She was replaced by a new hire, Don Lemon, who began by hosting the afternoon leg of the show along with Kagan’s former co-anchor Kyra Phillips, who remains. Lemon had been a local TV anchor in Chicago.

In prime time, CNN continued to promote its two tent poles, the star anchor Anderson Cooper’s Anderson Cooper 360, which starts at 10 p.m., and Wolf Blitzer’s The Situation Room, which runs from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Another prominent personality getting increasing attention is CNN’s Lou Dobbs, who hosts his one hour show at 6 p.m. as a break in Blitzer’s show. The rest of prime time is taken up by Paula Zahn Now (8 p.m.) and Larry King Live (9 p.m.)

Dobbs saw some notable ratings success in 2006 (see Audience). The surge came after Dobbs recast himself from a traditional financial journalist into an economic populist crusading on such issues as exportation of jobs and the decline of the middle class. The transformation has made Dobbs more an advocacy and opinion journalist in the mold of Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. And just as their shows have been the only ones seeing growth when cable news over all is slowing down, Dobbs’ numbers are also on the rise.

Dobbs, who has been with CNN since its inception (save for an interlude from 1999 to 2001) was an utterly conventional financial reporter who did features on different companies and interviews with corporate chieftains. His new show airs at 6 p.m. ET and begins CNN’s evening programming. The hour-long show is spilt in two: The first half hour contains domestic and international news, while the second is dominated by “brands” or special segments on his pet issues. These segments, with names like “Broken Borders” or “Exporting America,” are heavily promoted across CNN.⁷

CNN Headline News

One of the biggest questions facing the CNN news channels — CNN U.S. and CNN Headline News — is how they can compete with the more opinion-filled prime-time competition and still hold on to their reputation as objective news sources.

For CNN, one strategy has been to make Headline News a more personality-driven talk and opinion TV channel in prime time. Originally designed as a 24 hour “wheel” format, where headlines were simply repeated every half hour, the channel continued its efforts to create a more distinct identity for itself in 2006.

Ken Jautz, who is responsible for Headline News, told the New York Times that the channel was analogous to the op-ed page, with the main CNN providing the rest of the more objective news pages.

That, at least in prime time, represents a remarkable transformation for Headline News. The name itself in the evening is a holdover from another time, if not something of a misnomer. It is also, as noted in the Audience section, a sign of how headlines, or news on demand, is no longer a franchise cable commands alone.

The shift “from news to views” saw Headline News investing in some changes to its lineup and promoting a host of strong personalities. Chief among the channel’s star names are the prime-time talk-show hosts Glenn Beck and Nancy Grace, both controversial.⁸

Beck, a conservative talk-radio host, joined Headline News in May 2006 with his own prime-time show (Glenn Beck at 7 p.m. ET). Asserting that he is no journalist, Beck tends to takes radical points of view and claims to say “what others are feeling but afraid to say.”⁹

Equally brash, if not more so, is the other Headline News star, Nancy Grace. The former lawyer, who began the Nancy Grace legal talk-show in 2005, is known for her personal and emotional involvement in the cases she airs. In 2006, Grace’s aggressiveness became even more controversial when one of her guests, Melinda Duckett, committed suicide after Grace treated her as a potential suspect in the Ducketts’ son’s disappearance. In November 2006, the woman’s family sued Grace.¹⁰

But prime time is not the only slot on which CNN Headline News executives are concentrating. Noticing the attention that the morning anchor Robin Meade was getting, they re-branded the program around her — calling it Robin & Company — in October 2005, making it more conversational and less straight news. One year later, the strategy seemed to have paid off with higher ratings and positive audience feedback.

As for its lineup changes, it eliminated its 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. newscast, citing a need to “bolster their editorial services elsewhere.” To fill the gap, the earlier newscasts were increased by an hour each. In prime time, it extended its star weeknight shows to the weekends. Those include Prime News with Erica Hill, Showbiz Tonight and Nancy Grace.

MSNBC

The fate of MSNBC was the subject of much speculation throughout 2006. In October, NBC Television announced a major new initiative that implied that the channel would have to shift its current headquarters and combine its newsgathering resources with that of the sister concerns NBC News and CNBC. The changes to its staff weren’t clear yet, but the cuts at the NBC News division were an ominous sign for the newsgathering resources at MSNBC, which had already been cutting expenses for three years, (See Ownership and Network TV.)

Even before the NBC restructuring was announced in October 2006, MSNBC was making a significant number of programming changes.

In July 2006, soon after the resignation of its president and GM, Rick Kaplan, it cancelled the legal show he had approved, Rita Cosby: Live and Direct (only a few months after giving it a prime-time slot). MSNBC also saw the end of two other shows that Kaplan had approved, Connected Coast to Coast and Weekends with Maury and Connie. The latter was hosted by the NBC talk-show veteran Maury Povich and his wife, the former news anchor Connie Chung. Kaplan’s only remaining creation is the Tucker Carlson Show, which was re-branded Tucker and re-scheduled to an late afternoon slot, but it has been a ratings disappointment. According to Nielsen data, Carlson’s show saw a 19% drop in viewers in November 2006 compared to November 2005.

The star personalities on MSNBC instead have turned out to be Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann.

Reminiscent of Fox News’ opinion-laden prime time fare, Olbermann’s opinionated, increasingly anti-administration 8 p.m. talk show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, has become a surprise ratings success in recent months (see Audience). Indeed, in February 2007, MSNBC renewed his contract for four more years.¹¹

Before he became a news talker, Olbermann was a sports broadcaster, notably with ESPN. His sharp commentary and writing as a co-anchor of SportsCenter became a trademark for the channel, and he continues to appear on ESPN Radio.¹² He joined MSNBC in 1997 to host The Big Show, which became The White House in Crisis during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in 1998, but quit a year later. He rejoined the channel in March 2003 with the current show. Launched to cover the Iraq War, it was originally called Countdown: Iraq, but is now a mix of the top headlines (“counted down” to reach a big story last, though in reality the top stories of the day come first) accompanied by his comments and a number of quick recurring segments such as “Oddball” or “Top 3 Newsmakers.”

The show has been gaining viewers since August 2003, even though it competes at that hour with Fox News’s The O’Reilly Factor, the most-watched cable news show. Indeed, one of the factors for Olbermann’s success has been his on-air feud with O’Reilly. Openly critical of the Fox News host, Olbermann has frequently named him “the worst person in the world” (one the recurring segments of his show) that has consequently made Olbermann “a hero to liberals and anathema to conservatives.”¹³ More notably, it has led to both media coverage and higher ratings.

Olbermann is one of a growing number of cable news personalities bringing their opinions to news channels and succeeding. After years of ratings troubles, MSNBC couldn’t be happier. According to Dan Abrams, “Keith Olbermann is the right person at the right time, and doing it the right way."¹⁴

Fox News

One core of Fox News’ success, and one CNN and MSNBC are beginning to emulate, is that it has created distinct programs, usually built around opinionated personalities. And furthermore, it has managed to do that at different points in the day.

That success begins in the morning. From 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. ET, the channel airs Fox & Friends, the highest-rated cable morning show. According to some trade magazines, the program is even poised to take on the network broadcast shows.¹⁵ Built as a talk show with three hosts, the show’s casual and conversational approach is peppered with hard-news updates, personal opinion and ideological edge. The show saw no changes in format, though one of its anchors, E.D. Hill, was replaced by Gretchen Carlson in September 2006.

In February 2007, the channel re-branded its 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. block American Newsroom, hosted by Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelly. During the earlier programming changes in September 2006, Hemmer was made the anchor of a one-hour show at noon that used the Fox News Web site as a hook. “Fox Online” was a recap of the day’s top news and picked up stories that are most popular on the Web site for discussion. The time slot is now taken up by its predecessor, Fox News Live, which was extended by an hour; it now runs from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and is anchored by E. D. Hill.

September was also when the anchor Martha MacCallum was promoted to be a host of her own show, The Live Desk with Martha MacCallum, from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. The channel named Jane Skinner anchor of the weekday show Fox News Live, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., to replace MacCallum.

Another prominent change was the elimination of its Dayside program in September. The show’s anchors, Mike Jerrick and Juliet Huddy, headed to a network morning program for Fox’s broadcast stations (see Local TV Audience).¹⁶

The Fox Business Channel

The biggest question about Fox News in 2007 is its business channel, though its existence is now more a question of when, not if.

In February 2007, Murdoch announced that the Fox Business Channel would launch by the fourth quarter of the year.

Getting enough subscribers for the new channel to make financial sense was one of the biggest obstacles to its launch. It managed to reach its goal of 30 million subscribers by the end of 2006, after securing “carriage” or becoming a part of the channel line-up on the Comcast, Time Warner and Charter cable systems and on the DirecTV satellite network.¹⁷

The first big sign of News Corp.’s investment in the new venture was its inclusion in Fox News’s license-fee contract renegotiations in October 2006 (see Economics). While there was no official statement, trade reports early in the year said that Fox would ask for about 10 cents per subscriber per month for the business channel.¹⁸ Eventually, however, Fox executives clarified that the business channel was not a factor in determining the rates for Fox News.

News Corp. has already invested in some staff for the business channel. According to Television Week, Neil Cavuto will oversee content and business news coverage.¹⁹ Day-to-day operations will be handled by Kevin Magee, a former Fox radio syndication chief who is also in charge of the new syndicated morning TV show on the broadcast network. He was named executive vice president of the business channel in October 2006.

Joining them will be former CNBC correspondent Alexis Glick, who was made director of business news in September 2006. She is also expected to anchor on-air.

New York , New York

One other change in cable newsrooms was a greater push toward New York City, the traditional home of national television news. All three networks created a higher presence there in 2006. CNN beefed up its studio, Fox News bought marketing space on Times Square and MSNBC moved in with NBC News.

CNN, headquartered in Georgia, invested in a large studio at the Time Warner Center (its New York headquarters). The new studio is technologically advanced, and its centerpiece is a giant video wall displaying both video and graphics that first showed up during the broadcast of Anderson Cooper 360 in October 2006. It was promoted as a big-screen showcase for the latest video and informational graphics pouring into CNN from around the nation, the world and the Web, and was used heavily during the election coverage in November 2006.

All MSNBC operations are expected to be out of New Jersey sometime in 2007 as it begins sharing space with NBC News at its Rockefeller Center headquarters in Manhattan.

Most of Fox News’s programs are aired from its New York headquarters (also the site for a massive 10th anniversary party in October 2006). The Fox Television group built on its presence in the city by signing a 10-year deal to air its programming on Times Square. The 1,400-square-foot television screen is an iconic marketing space, and the Fox group intends to use it to air Fox News content morning and evening, along with local news from the New York Fox station and sports programming. Its new business channel is also expected to be based in Manhattan.

Footnotes

1. Kagan figures for CNN presented in this section include economic data for CNN/U.S. and CNN Headline News only since they have been sold as a package to U.S. advertisers. The two CNN channels are separated in Audience analysis because Nielsen Media Research, which aggregates data on audience figures, provides figures for each one individually. They do not include expenses on other CNN operations or subsidiaries, such as CNN International, CNN en Espanol, CNN Radio, CNN en Espanol Radio, CNN NewsSource, CNN.com, CNN Money.com, CNN Studentnews.com, CNN Airport Network, CNN to go, and CNN Mobile. (Source: Time Warner Web site)

2. In 2005, all three channels spent approximately 60% of their total expenses on programming. Fox News invested the most at 60.4%, followed by MSNBC at 59.2% and CNN at 57.4 %.

3. With much higher revenues, both Fox News and CNN manage to spend a lesser share (and therefore, generate higher profits) than MSNBC. CNN is expected to have spent about 68% of its revenues to cover expenses in 2006, against 70% in 2005. That share is much less than MSNBC (76%), but more than that of Fox News. For 2006, Fox News was expected to devote just about half (56%) of its revenue to cover expenses, compared to 60% in 2005.

4. Matea Gold, “Up Next, Wrangling Respect,” Los Angeles Times, October 8, 2006. The bureaus are based in London, Paris, Jerusalem, Hong Kong, Moscow and Rome. Personal Correspondence with Matea Gold, December 9, 2006.

5. Ibid.

6. MSNBC bureaus and staff size obtained through e-mail correspondence with their PR department on December 12, 2006. Staff numbers for CNN and Fox News were not available at the time of publication.

7. See Kurt Andersen, “The Lou Dobbs Factor,” New York Magazine, December 4, 2006.

8. Noam Cohen, “With Brash Hosts, Headline News finds More Viewers at Prime Time,” New York Times, December 4, 2006.

9. Ibid.

10. Critics and the family argued that Grace’s questioning was out of line and could be responsible for the suicide. The channel’s continued airing of the episode after the incident was also criticized as in bad taste. Grace herself was unapologetic and CNN offered no comment but to say it supports Grace.

11. He will continue to host the show and even take it to NBC with two Countdown prime-time specials every year. In addition, Olbermann will contribute to NBC Nightly News with occasional essays as well. “Olbermann Re-ups with MSNBC,” MSNBC Press Release, February 15, 2007

12. He also appears on the Dan Patrick Show on ESPN radio in the afternoons. Bill Carter, “MSNBC’s Star Carves Anti-Fox Niche,” New York Times, July 11, 2006

13. Mackenzie Carpenter, “Anchor Olbermann Counts on Commentary to Boost MSNBC’s Ratings,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 12, 2006

14. Ibid.

15. Michele Greppi, “Seeking Gains from Change: CNN Program angles for samplers,” TV Week, June 12, 2006

16. Off camera, the Fox News veteran Kim Hume (wife of anchor Brit Hume) left her post as the channel’s vice president and Washington D.C. bureau chief after the mid-term elections in November 2006. Bruce Becker, working as an editor and producer with Fox News since 1996, took over on an interim basis.

17. Comcast had agreed to air the business channel for its digital subscribers, giving it a viewership of 12 million in November 2006. That will be in addition to the subscribers it can reach on DirecTV (15.5 million) and Cablevision, both of which have agreed to carry the channel. Richard Siklos, “Comcast is Said to Agree to Carry Fox’ Planned Business News Channel,” New York Times, November 7, 2006

18. Mike Reynolds, “Fox News Bucks Odds”, MultiChannel News, April 17, 2006

19. Michele Greppi, “Fox Business Channel in Fourth Quarter,” Television Week, February 8, 2007

Digital

While it is among the newer technologies, cable may be as challenged by the digital revolution as any medium. The main reason is that the Internet is a threat to cable’s great appeal: immediacy and news on demand.

Viewing habits have already changed. Consumers now have the choice to get many of their TV news shows without needing to own a TV — through the Internet, downloaded as a podcast or read on their cell phones, all trends likely to accelerate as the reach of higher-speed broadband connections spreads.

In 2006, all three cable news channels made their television content available on the “third screen” — the cell phone. MSNBC has made a specialized version of its site available to subscribers of most cell-phone companies, apart from sending headlines on the phones. CNN sends an audio feed of CNN Radio as well as headlines and CNN videos from the site, while Fox News began a new service in January 2007 that allows mobile phone users to listen to live audio of the channel’s on-air broadcasts (see more details in respective sections below).

While it is a niche market right now, the potential for growth of mobile phone content, both text and audio-visual, is huge. It is helped by the fact that the number of high-speed cell phone networks that can support video is on the rise. Mobile TV may be in its infancy, but it’s growing fast. It will be interesting to see how “news friendly” it will be.

Cable TV News Web sites
Developments in 2006

Source: Respective Web sites, December 2006

The extension to new platforms also brings with it new competition. The cable news networks need to outperform not just traditional rivals, but online news media leaders. Those include news aggregators such as Yahoo, AOL and Google. Those Web portals, which are already in heavy use and familiar to consumers, pose a serious challenge to any traditional media outlet, be it television, print or audio. They aggregate coverage from a wide variety of news outlets, aiming to give users a wider breadth of information in a kind of one-stop-shopping Web site. Both these activities are a function of time and convenience, and news outlets are worried that consumers might not think it worth their while to make the extra effort to come to their individual sites.

What is also unclear is what synergy or relationship there will be among different platforms. Will posting a story on the Web also drive viewers to the news organization’s TV product? Will cable networks become, some day, Internet companies, the prospect many think is facing newspapers?

While they have all developed their mobile content along similar lines, the three cable news channels have taken very different approaches to their online identities.

MSNBC (www.msnbc.msn.com)

MSNBC.com comes across as an amalgam. As the online home of NBC, MSNBC and the weekly magazine Newsweek, the site strives to give all three their due while at the same time creating its own identity. Those efforts, however chaotic they may seem, have succeeded in building an audience.

Unlike its performance on cable TV, MSNBC’s Web site (which launched simultaneously with the cable channel in 1996 as a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC) has long been one of the top three news sites on the Internet, with a monthly average of 26 million unique visitors.

What is in the brand that draws users to the site?

No one trait jumps out. In our study of 38 different news websites, MSNBC doesn’t strongly emphasize any one area. Indeed, it did not earn the highest marks in category of content. But it scored fairly well at everything and did not earn low marks anywhere, one of the few sites that can make that claim. It really was a jack of all trades.

The site is word oriented. Roughly three-quarters of the stories on the homepage are text-based. Just 12% of stories took advantage of the video produced by either MSNBC or NBC. This puts it at the mid-low range of the spectrum for multimedia. On the days we examined, users could at one point access a slide show or an interactive graphic, but these were few and far between. There were no live components at all.

The lead story often has a video component attached to it, but most other video offerings on the page stand apart either within a section labeled “Video” or under the header “NBC News Highlights.”

A bigger draw may be the ways users can customize the news or add their own views, but even here the site doesn’t employ as much as others, falling in the mid-high range of the sites studied. Currently, the site has focused more on making its content mobile, rather than the site itself customizable. In November 2006, the Web site began offering free video podcasts of NBC’s Nightly News and Meet the Press. Earlier, in April 2006, the channel announced that a specialized, ad-supported version of the Web site would be available free on cell phones with Internet capability. MSNBC’s mobile phone service (called MSNBC.com Mobile) is available on all major phone networks. Initially it was only text, photos and podcasts, with a notice on the site saying that multimedia components were expected, but with no timeline mentioned.¹ The new business model is seen to be a test to gauge how consumers react to advertising on their mobile devices. There are also additional RSS options.

The home page itself, though, is less flexible. There is only a simple key word search. And users can choose homepage layout, but only for the current view. At the next visit, it’s back to MSNBC’s design.

How about citizen voice — Web 2.0? MSNBC is not the top destination we found for users who want to be heard. There is no user-generated content, no user-based blogs, and no live discussion. There are a few ways to be heard. Some stories allow users to enter into an online chat. Also, users can rate a story and the results are used in a couple of different ways. First, the results for that story are posted at the bottom of the piece in a star system along with the number of ratings to date. Second, on each inside page is a list of “most popular” stories at a given moment.

As the online home of multiple news outlets (even Newsweek’s own site often directs people here) it is not surprising that brand identity can get confusing. There is content from all of its family members—MSNBC, NBC, Newsweek—as well as the Washington Post and the wire services. In fact, wire stories make up a good portion of their top headlines. Staff editors control the content, but again, there seems to be a bit of a split over whether their mission is to promote the family names or the content itself.

The top stories of the hour command a good amount of the prime real estate. The next three sections promote reports from each of the three news outlets, followed by Web site-only content — “only on MSNBC.com.” Scrolling down the page, though, a visitor can eventually get to a list of content organized by topics in the news. The editorial staff also keeps tight control over where users go once they enter. None of the stories we examined ever contained links to outside Web sites.

Perhaps in the end, it is the revenue structure, or lack thereof, that attracts people to the site. MSNBC.com expanded how many ads it contained from September 2006 to February of 2007, but it still remained on the low end. In September there were just 7 ads, all of which were self-promotional. In 2007, a few more had been added, including one prominent outside ad per day and a list of “sponsored links” at the bottom of the page.

Still, the most visible ones are self-promotional and are relatively unobtrusive.

The site doesn’t make up for the ad-free environment by asking users to pay. There is no fee-based content at all, not even the archive. Nor does the site demand that visitors reveal personal information; it has no registration at all.

CNN (www.cnn.com)

Streaming an average of 50 million news videos a month, and averaging about 24 million unique visitors a month,² CNN.com comes second to MSNBC among the three cable news sites in traffic.

While MSNBC has the advantage of being a partner of MSN, the leading Internet portal in the U.S., CNN benefits from its commercial relationship with Yahoo, which is the search engine for CNN and sells the advertising displayed on the site.³ It is also working to tie together its digital media components. In October of 2006, the channel formed “CNN Events,” a division devoted to cross-media marketing that allows a marketer to buy advertising across the CNN spectrum — television, the Internet, and newscasts provided through cell phones and podcasts.⁴

What impression does the site give its users? Like MSNBC, the site seems more about doing many different things than identifying itself around particular skills. Again like MSNBC, the site did not earn top marks in any one of our content categories, but scored in the mid-range for all, and earned low marks for none.

The site maintains the cable channel’s focus on up-to-the-minute information. But it also makes some effort to develop its own Web identity with less emphasis on the on-air personalities and more on user’s ability to customize the news. Beyond the top few stories, however, it also relies more often than not on outside wire copy for its headlines and its breadth.

On the homepage, the latest headlines take up the bulk of the screen view. The lead story dominates the site on the left of the screen, and is normally accompanied by three or four related stories that have some multimedia elements. On September 22, 2006 it was a story about the E. coli outbreak in spinach with links to a CNN video report on the lack of standards for spinach safety and a graphic map of states with E. coli outbreaks.

It adds new content at least every 20 minutes, with a time stamp for the latest update at the top of the homepage and time stamps at the top of each full story. The focus on continuous updates, though, seems to take priority over other depth to the news. The site averaged just four related story links to lead story and just over one for other top headlines.

The CNN name is important on the site, but as with depth, takes second seat to timeliness. Most headlines are wire stories, and those that come from CNN staff carry no bylines, except when stories are taken directly from the cable channel or occasionally from a sister outlet from the Time Warner family. The layout of the page is by top news and then by topic area like World, Health, Travel and Law, and the stories here are mostly AP as well. Overall, CNN.com fell in the high-mid range for the level of brand control.

Under the headlines is a list of video segments, offered again in two ways: either most popular or “best video” (though it is not entirely clear how “best” is determined). Next to that the site displays its premium video content — CNN Pipeline. A commercial-free subscription service of streaming video content, it was launched in December 2005 and has helped to make the site more appealing.⁵

CNN puts noticeable effort into letting the user customize the material. The site scored in the mid-high range here. Users can create a customized home page. They can also choose to have the information come to them through RSS with more than 20 feeds, ranging from straight news to blogs, Podcasts (both audio and video) or even to their mobile phones (an option not yet available at even some of the higher-tech sites we examined but available on all three cable news sites).

The site’s mobile content is in a section called CNN to Go, which includes news headlines, alerts on breaking news and an audio-video newscast produced specifically for the Web called “Now in the News.” CNN also offers a live audio feed of CNN Radio. What’s more, nearly all of the content on CNN.com is free. That includes all archives, a feature quickly fading on many Web sites. Users don’t even have to register to go through content, but can if they choose. The only fee-based content is CNN Pipeline.

In an attempt to be more interactive, CNN launched a citizen journalism initiative in August 2006. Called “I-Report,” it invites people to contribute news items for possible use on the Web and on the cable channel. On a subsidiary site called CNN Exchange, users can submit their own news reports, photos or video either on specific solicited topics or those of their own choosing. CNN editors then screen the material and decide what to publish. (CNN does not pay for the material).

The user content here stands out among news sites, but some of the more standard ways to invite user input are absent. There is no place on the homepage for users to post comments, enter live discussion, rate stories or take part in a user-dedicated blog. Even the ability to email the author is offered in only the most general capacity.

When it comes to multimedia components of its content, the site landed right in the middle of our ranking scale. It is still heavily based on narrative text—it made up roughly 70% of all the content on the homepage. Pre-recorded video and photography were still the most common other forms, but the site also offered live streams, slide shows and interactive polls. The lead story was almost always made into a “package” of reports offered in at least three different media formats.

When it came to revenue options, the site demands little of users and varies on its use of ads. The only fee-based content is on CNN Pipeline, a broadband channel providing live streaming video, video-on-demand clips and video archives. Its subscription fee is $25 a year or $2.95 a month.⁶ For the rest of CNN.com, the “cost” to users is putting up with a barrage of ads. When it comes to ads, one visit to the home page displayed 19 separate ads, only 6 of which were self-promotional. But another visit had just six ads, all but one of which was non-CNN related.

Fox News (www.foxnews.com)

Fox News, the star on cable, lags behind the other two cable news channels online. Its Web site has roughly a third the audience of its competitors, though it made efforts to address that lag in 2006.

In November, Roger Ailes appointed Ken LaCorte, Fox Television’s Los Angeles bureau chief, to head Foxnews.com and take over all editorial and design functions. He will report directly to John Moody, vice president of news for the Fox network.

The site was revamped in September 2006 in an effort to streamline the content. It also added new interactive and delivery features. Visitors to the site can now customize it as they like and have the option of getting Fox News headlines on their Blackberry phones and cell phones.⁷ As a result, the Fox site now earns the highest marks for both the level of customization offered on the site and for the level of multi media offerings, and mid-range marks in all other categories. It has become somewhat more competitive, by those measures, with its rivals.

Even so, Foxnews.com still feeds off the brand identity and strength of the cable channel more than it embodies an identity for itself. For the most part, the site is the Fox News Channel. The brand promoted here are the Fox personalities rather than individual stories, to a much greater degree than CNN or MSNBC.

The top of the page is dedicated to the news headlines, but up-to-the-minute news is clearly not given the same kind of priority as at other cable news sites. It updates every half hour, but there are usually just three or four headlines, which are brief unadorned reports from wires. Each headline stands alone, sometimes with a related wire story link underneath. There is little attempt to create coverage packages with multimedia reports or backgrounders from Fox News. About a quarter of the stories we captured had been augmented somehow by staff members, whose names, unknown to most, appear on the inside (i.e. landing) page at the very bottom of the story. What’s more, the page has just one overall time stamp of the latest update, rather than time stamps on each story as is common at other sites.

After top headlines and other “latest news” from the AP, the page focuses on promoting the Fox brand with content involving Fox hosts and programs. In the upper right corner when we looked in September 2006 were Fox News videos, with a Web-exclusive interview with Senator Barack Obama. The interview was an exclusive that first aired about 10 hours earlier. That same interview also appeared as the lead item in the next section down, “Only on Fox,” along with a link to a science report “Black hole won’t devour Earth, scientists say.” Other subsections on the page also carry the Fox name and previously aired Fox News content: Fox411, Fox Online, FNC iMag, Fox News Talk and individual program listings.

The site does emphasize the use of multimedia more than those of its cable rivals. Just over half of the content was text-based (primarily the wire feed stories) with heavy use of video and still photos but also some live streams, podcast items, polls and interactive graphics. In October 2006, Foxnews.com launched two new video products, collectively called “Fox News Flash.”⁸ They include two one-minute newscasts, in the morning by Fox & Friends and in the afternoon by the Fox Report with Shepard Smith. Those news segments can also be received, without any need to subscribe to the site, in the form of video podcasts.

The site also targeted mobile phone users starting in January 2007 when it launched a new service called “#FOXN,” the acronym for the digits you dial to access it. It allows customers to listen to live audio of the cable channel’s on-air broadcasts. The service costs $2.99 a month and so far is available only to Cingular wireless service customers right now. It will also offer headlines on demand as well as a call-back service to let users know when a particular program is about to begin on the television channel.⁹

In promoting its brand, the site places little emphasis on making its users part of that identity, ranking in the low-mid tier of all 38 sites. The personalities on Foxnews.com speak to you much more than you speak to them or even to each other. The site had one of the lowest user-participation scores of any Web site in the study, offering only the most basic ability to e-mail the author of a report along with a poll on how visitors rated the Fed (related to a topic to be discussed on “Your World” later that day). Even the e-mail ability is only occasional, and the e-mail goes not to the staff member who worked on the piece but to the nameless “editor” of that section. There is no way to post comments or rate a story, no live discussion and no user-oriented blog.

When it comes to economics, the main revenue stream on Foxnews.com is commercial ads. Upon entering the site, Foxnews.com visitors get pummeled with ads, the bulk of them for outside commercial enterprises. On average, viewers saw 21 separate ads just on the home page. That puts the site in the top tier of all the ones examined

There is a news archive, at least two years of which is free to users. It includes stories from all the main sections of the site, though video components are quite spotty at this point.

All in all, Foxnews.com is the lesser-nourished sibling of the Fox News Channel. Whether attention and resources begin to even out as the online world expands remains to be seen.

Footnotes

1. See the MSNBC Mobile section on the Web site for details

2. Scott Leith, “CNN to Start Web site for Viewer’s Journalism,” the Miami Herald, August 3, 2006; Also see Online News Ownership section, State of the News Media 2007.

3. Elise Ackerman, “New media making deals with old news providers,” San Jose Mercury News, July 31, 2006

4. As Greg D’Alba, CNN’s head of marketing and sales, was quoted as saying, event marketing gives the CNN brand the opportunity to extend itself beyond the television channel to all digital media, specifically to initiatives like podcasts and video-on-demand.

5. On September 11, 2006 it used CNN Pipeline to stream the TV channel’s coverage of the original terrorist attacks, exemplifying how it can be used for value added content.

6. While Pipeline is fee-based, most digital offshoots and hybrids are typically advertising-supported and therefore free for consumers. Unofficially, many Internet-savvy users have figured out how to download virtually any TV show they want for free. Using file-sharing software, they have set up Web sites where they share digital video recordings. The most prominent of those is YouTube.

7. Jon Fine, “How Fox was Outfoxed,” Business Week, February 13, 2006

8. The two newscasts are also available on the News Corp. sister site MySpace.com and through iTunes. Customers who have video capability on their Cingular, Sprint or Amp’d phones can also get them. Paul J. Gough, “Fox Making News in a Flash,” Hollywood Reporter, October 30, 2006

9. Glen Dickson, “Fox News Channel Provides Audio-to-Go,” Broadcasting & Cable, January 17, 2007

Public Attitudes

What do people think of cable news?

A look at the survey data of public attitudes and public use of the medium reveals signs of declining use, some declining trust, and in some ways less separation between the audiences of the three main cable channels than one might expect.

Overall, the number of people who say they regularly get their news from cable channels decreased in 2006, as it did at all the other news outlets. Just over a third, 34%, described themselves as regular viewers of cable news, a drop of 4 percentage points from 2004.¹

What Do They think?

Whether coincidentally or not, people have also become more skeptical of whether they can trust cable news.

Even CNN, which leads all other outlets in credibility, doesn’t command the level of trust it did a decade ago. Its credibility ratings have been slipping steadily since 1993 (the channel was launched in 1981). In 1998, 42% of all those surveyed said they “believed all or most” of what they saw on CNN, the primary metric Pew has used to measure credibility. In 2006, the figure was 28%.

Still, CNN remains the most trusted source among those surveyed, just slightly higher than the next most trusted sources — CBS’s “60 Minutes” (27%), C-SPAN (25%) and Fox News (25%).

Fox News, on the other hand, has a loyal audience whose belief in what they see on the channel remains unchanged. The number of people who believe all or most of what they see on the channel didn’t fall in 2006, making Fox News one of the few media outlets not to have suffered a decline.²

Cable News Believability

1985 - 2006, by Channel

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press Note: Fox News & MSNBC were launched in 1996 & only included in 2000 in the survey

A Reuters/BBC poll released in May 2006, found similar levels of credibility. CNN and Fox were tied when Americans were asked to name their most trusted specific news sources. Both generated a rating of 11% — modest figures, but higher than those of other media outlets.³

Those ratings for the two channels don’t reflect, however, the partisan leanings of their viewers. In the Pew Survey responses, Republicans said they believed Fox News more, Democrats CNN.

Over time, however, Democrats have seen both news sources as less credible. In 2006, only about a third of Democrats (32%) gave CNN the highest marks for credibility, down from almost half (48%) just six years earlier. One in five (22%) believed most of what they saw on Fox, down from better than one in four (27%) in 2000.

Republicans, in contrast, have come to trust Fox more in the last six years, while growing more skeptical of CNN. Indeed, in 2006, Republicans were as trusting of Fox (32% believed most of what they heard, up from 26% in 2000) as Democrats were of CNN. And Republicans were just as skeptical of CNN as Democrats were of Fox (just 22% believed most of what the channel said, down from 33% in 2000).

In short, the newest data on public attitudes seem to put in clear relief the idea that Republicans gravitate to Fox and Democrats to CNN. Their impressions of the two channels are almost mirror images of each other.

Who Is Watching Cable News?

Are those reverse images also reflected in the audience profiles of the news channels?

The biennial study on media consumption produced by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press may also be the deepest source for understanding who the cable news viewer is. The survey probes the media habits of more than 3,000 people every two years.

Using its findings, the average news viewer emerges as just that — average. Regular viewers of cable news are neither richer nor better educated nor better informed than regular users of other news outlets.⁴ The regular cable news viewer can be personified as a married, middle-aged man who has at least 14 years of education. He earns well, with a median income of $62,000, and tends to live in the suburbs. He has a high degree of hard-news consumption, and that links to his moderately high knowledge of current affairs. He is fairly adaptive to technology (more likely than other news consumers to own a PDA, iPod or Tivo). Compared to viewers of other media, the cable news viewer earns more (local and network news viewers have a median income of $45,000) and is also much more adaptive to technology. He is also younger than viewers of network news (who are nearly 53 years of age). The average cable viewer is 47.5, and there are only marginal differences by channel.

How does this reflect in his political leanings? He is more often than not a political independent and describes himself as having a moderate ideology.

Are there any differences between regular viewers of the three cable channels? The biggest difference is political ideology. After that, however, the differences may not be as great as some might imagine.

Using Pew’s media consumption survey, we have compiled a profile of the average viewer of different media outlets and sectors.

The average viewer of Fox News identifies himself as conservative in ideology (although he classifies his party affiliation as independent).

The average CNN viewer, in contrast, self-identifies as being a moderate, but also tends to be registered as independent.

The MSNBC viewer tends to be a Democrat, and describes himself as a political moderate.

Fox News viewers are the oldest at 48.7 years, followed by CNN (47.1) and MSNBC (46.5). Of the three, the CNN viewers have the lowest median income, $45,000 a year. In contrast, both MSNBC and Fox News viewers make $62,000.

One other difference between the viewers of the three channels is their news knowledge. In a fairly simple test, regular viewers of CNN were able to answer more current-affairs questions correctly than viewers of Fox News or MSNBC.⁵ Out of the three questions on current affairs that were asked in the survey, CNN viewers got two correct. The Fox News and MSNBC viewers just got one correct. (The questions asked respondents to name which party had a majority in the House of Representatives, the current U.S. secretary of state, and the president of Russia). That puts CNN viewers on par with viewers of network news, but more knowledgeable than local-news viewers (who got just one question correct).

What does this audience profile portend? One possibility is that the audience is fracturing, with the most liberal audiences heading to MSNBC, a more moderate group at CNN and the more conservative at Fox. But that would probably be an oversimplification. The networks are also dividing by style and even somewhat by topic. MSNBC is moving to make politics a brand, with a large dose of opinion and personality. CNN has moved further away from talk on its main channel, but toward it on Headline News. And Fox is holding steady. And the audience declines across the board suggest that the three channels may be competing for each others’ audiences in the months to come.

Footnotes

1. The Pew Research Center for the People & Press, “Online Papers Modestly Boost Newspaper Readership,” July 30, 2006. Online at: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=1067

2. In 2000, 26% of those surveyed believed what they saw on Fox News, and in 2006 the figure had barely dropped, to 25%.

3. The poll was conducted in 10 countries by research firm GlobeScan on behalf of Reuters, BBC and the Media Center. “Trust Catching Up with Media Technology: Poll”, Reuters, May 3, 2006.

4. The Pew Research Center conducted its latest biennial survey on news consumption in April-May 2006. It is based on telephone interviews conducted among 3,204 adults nationwide. It was released on July 30, 2006. Online at: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=282

5. The Pew Research Center for the People & Press, “Online Papers Modestly Boost Newspaper Readership,” July 30, 2006. See topline at: http://people-press.org/reports/questionnaires/282.p

Alternative News

An International Perspective

Three new channels entered the fray of international 24-hour English-language news in 2006. BBC World News, backed by the well-established British broadcaster, expanded from three hours to full-time in the United States. The other two, Al Jazeera and France 24, were new channels making their global launch in English, with the U.S. just one piece of that bigger story.

All three, with their disparate reputations and infrastructure, faced a host of challenges.

First, audience trends suggest that the number of cable subscribers for the existing channels may have reached its peak in the U.S. The most established TV broadcasters are working hard to lure back viewers, and the three U.S. cable news channels saw their combined audiences decline.

Second, all three new international channels have limited exposure in the U.S. For American audiences to see them, the new channels have to negotiate “carriage” with cable operators so they can be aired. And cable distributors, who have a limited capacity for the number of channels they can carry, may not be eager to give up valuable space for niche international news channels. For their part, the U.S. cable news channels are all backed by influential U.S. media conglomerates and are also combined in package deals with other, more lucrative, entertainment and/or sports programming. The new foreign imports have no such advantages. So the international news channels, with their niche appeal, have had to make do with a small start in the U.S. television landscape. BBC World and France 24 are accessible in only one market each, while Al-Jazeera, which faces political as well as economic concerns, can be viewed only online. According to Chris Daly, a professor at Boston University, “it seems highly unlikely that there would ever be a mass market in the United States for journalism that originates in Britain or anywhere else.”¹

Survey research supports that view. According to the latest Pew Research Center biennial survey of U.S. news consumption, fewer people are following international news closely (dropping 13 percentage points, from 52% in 2004 to 39% in 2006). In a separate question, more than half the respondents (58%) said they follow international news only when something important is happening.²

International Cable News Channels
At a Glance

Source: Multiple sources, please refer to section footnotes

BBC World

The BBC Worldwide division of the British Broadcasting Corporation made its first foray into the realm of U.S. 24-hour cable news networks in April, 2006.

It signed a deal with Cablevision to distribute a 24-hour news channel called BBC World on its digital stream in the New York area (the largest Nielsen television market). The agreement helps the British news channel reach 2 million Cablevision subscribers in the New York metropolitan area. Before the Cablevision deal, BBC news was available only through 30-minute segments aired on PBS stations or on BBC America, BBC’s channel for entertainment programming. BBC America, which was launched in the U.S. in 1998, is distributed by Time Warner (where the news airs in a three-hour block in the morning).

The 24-hours news channel went on the air in June 2006. A month later, it also began to air World News Today, a one-hour breakfast program (7 a.m. ET) aimed specifically at the American audience, though it is broadcast from BBC’s London headquarters. Anchored by George Alagiah, it competes directly with the American network morning news shows.³

While its American audience is minuscule compared with the number of households reached by its U.S. rivals (see Audience), BBC World News executives see it as a good start and hope to sign on more cable systems in 2007. As media critics report, they hope to attract educated, affluent American professionals and through them, coveted advertising dollars.⁴

In the promotion campaign of the launch, BBC World executives stressed their content as an alternative to Fox News and CNN. Targeting the hard-news consumer, their strategy hinged on BBC’s content and experience in telling “both sides of the story.” It hopes to convince American viewers that it will be unbiased, objective and a better alternative than the existing choices.

Globally, the BBC is probably the leading television and radio brand of all and is counting on that fame to overcome the obstacles it is facing in its entry into the U.S. television market.

In contrast, the two other international news channels, Al Jazeera and France 24, entered the international news scene for the first time. For them, the U.S. is just one of the many markets in which they have to compete and make a place for themselves.

Al-Jazeera English

After multiple delays, the English-language sibling of the controversial Arab Al-Jazeera Network (formerly known as Al-Jazeera International) launched on November 15, 2006. Unlike its sister network, which focuses only on the Middle East for an Arabic-speaking audience, Al-Jazeera English is aimed at the larger English-speaking audience around the world.

Unlike BBC World, Al-Jazeera is privately owned and comes with the strong financial backing of the oil-rich Emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. He is reported to have spent $1 billion on the channel launch already.

Not that it doesn’t come well equipped. The channel employs more than 500 journalists, including a number of veteran Europeans and Americans,⁵ working in about 20 bureaus across Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.⁶ In addition, the channel gets support from the Arabic Al-Jazeera network, with which it will share resources such as news crews and footage.⁷

Al-Jazeera English is the first English-language news channel to be based in the Middle East, in Doha, Qatar. Newscasts will come from four locations —  Doha; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; London, and Washington D.C.

The channel launched with 12 hours of programming, but expanded to 24 hours by early 2007. Apart from news updates from its four broadcast centers, it has business and sports programs as well as news analysis and talk-shows (for example, the Riz Khan Show).

It is carried on cable and satellite systems in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. For American viewers, however, the channel is barely accessible, even though Washington is one of its key broadcast centers.

Despite talks that went on for more than a year, no American cable distributor had agreed to sign a deal with the channel by the end of 2006. At launch, it could be accessed only on four little-known platforms – VDC and Jump TV (where the channel is streamed over the Internet), GlobeCast, a niche satellite network, and Fision, a new fiber-optic network based only in Houston that itself launched in December, 2006.⁸

The reluctance stems essentially from of the reputation the Arabic Al-Jazeera. Branded by the Bush Administration as anti-American, it is also one of the most aggressive news operations in the Middle East, and, at point or another, has been banned in many Middle Eastern states. It has even been accused of having ties to the Al-Qaeda (see PEJ’s Al-Jazeera Timeline and Interview in August 2006). Media watchdog organizations, such as the very conservative Accuracy in Media (AIM) and the more respected Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) are critical of its coverage and what they consider its dubious connections. They believe the same kind of reporting will carry through on the English Channel.

But that has not deterred the channel, or its executives. Nigel Parsons, managing director, says viewers of the English version should not expect to see the Al-Jazeera that the Arab world watches daily.⁹ Whether it will be able to convince U.S. television distributors (and advertisers) is another question.

France 24

The French, too, added their voice to the international media scene in 2006.

Their 24 hour news channel “France 24” went on air in December 2006. A joint venture between the public broadcaster France Televisions and TF1, France's biggest commercial network, the channel airs simultaneously in French and English from its headquarters near Paris. In addition to its own 180 journalists, it will draw on TF1 and France Televisions’ correspondents.¹⁰

As with Al Jazeera English, the U.S. is just a small part of the channel’s reach. It is broadcast across the world on cable and satellite networks in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Washington area in the United States. At launch the channel came into about 80 million homes in about 100 countries.

Like BBC World and Al-Jazeera, though, France 24 finds most of those 80 million homes outside the U.S. So far, it can be seen only in the U.N. headquarters in New York and in the Washington area. In the capital, it airs on the Comcast cable system’s digital stream with the help of the MHz network, a D.C.-based television network that promotes international programming and helps it get cable, satellite and Internet exposure in the U.S.¹¹ In addition, the “Best of France 24” was featured on its national program stream, which is carried on PBS stations, GlobeCast TV (which also carries Al-Jazeera) and DirecTV starting in January 2007.¹²

President Jacques Chirac is said to be the force behind making France 24 a reality. In 2003, a report by the French Parliament argued for the creation of the channel to counter and “balance (Anglo-American) Imperialism."¹³ According to its mission statement, France 24 aims to “convey the values of France throughout the world.” As Alain de Pouzilhac, who heads the new channel, says, “this channel has to discover international news with French eyes, as CNN (does)… with American eyes.”¹⁴

While some critics question the channel’s credibility given its government support, which includes $112 million in subsidies, channel executives insist that it is editorially independent and nonpartisan. Pouzilhac says the channel will demonstrate that as it gears up to cover the French elections in April 2007. He also hopes to attract viewers by covering areas that are generally under-reported — developments in Africa, for example, where many countries are former French colonies.

Plans include a Web site and further expansion by 2009. According to media reports, channel executives say it will earn about $9 million in revenues by 2008, and expect advertising revenues of $4 million in 2007. However, as the same media reports indicate, this still leaves France 24 about $100 million in debt.¹⁵

All three channels, then, have ambitious plans to add their perspective to international news coverage. And all are optimistic that in time there will be enough viewers for what they have to offer in the U.S. as well.

Current TV

One channel that seems to have succeeded in capturing an American audience is Current TV. Launched on August 1, 2005 by the entrepreneur Joel Hyatt and the former vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore, the channel has been making waves.¹⁶ Its viewership is growing, it is making a profit and it is expanding both online and internationally.

Boasting of the first national network programming created by, for and with 18 to 34 year olds,¹⁷ Current TV’s selling proposition is a participatory model that claims to give its “citizen journalists” the kind of power that used to be enjoyed only by the mainstream media.

The channel is also distinguished by its “short-form” programming. Programs consist of a series of short segments, each called a pod. They are 15 seconds to 5 minutes long and cover a range of issues aimed at young adults. Some are professionally produced, others are “viewer-created content” (VC2). Within three months of launch, VC2 made up 30% of all programming.¹⁸

While it is not strictly a news channel, one of its key regular pods is “Google Current,” which runs at the top and bottom of each hour. The pod displays the most popular Google news searches in the past hour. It is about three minutes long and has an anchor going through the top stories. In addition to this regular pod, many of the VC2 pods deal with events in the news and current affairs.

One of the mantras of the network is that there are no editors who decide what the “news” on those segments is. As the channel puts it, “news isn’t what the network thinks you should know, but what the world is searching to learn.”¹⁹

The channel is carried in most U.S. cities through agreements with Comcast, Time Warner Digital (where it can be seen on the digital tier), DirecTV and a host of cable companies. When it launched, it was available only in Los Angeles and New York, and those two markets gave it an initial audience of 20 million households.²⁰ Projections for 2006 put the number at about 30 million. While that is considerable compared with other international news channels, it is still too small to be counted by Nielsen; the general threshold of success for aspiring cable or satellite channels is about 40 million homes.

Even with a limited number of on-air subscribers, and only about a year in existence, analysts estimate Current TV to be making a profit. In August 2006, the Kagan Research analyst Derek Baine predicted that the channel would turn a profit of $3 million on estimated revenue of $47 million in 2006.²¹

The success is also attracting advertisers. Baine estimated that Current TV earned advertising revenue of about $10 million in 2006, and that it would go up to $19 million in 2007. Indeed, advertising on the channel is also in “short-form.” Each pod is accompanied by one isolated “creative brand message” (i.e., an ad) up to 60 seconds in length. In addition, there’s a longer ad spot, up to three minutes long, every hour. The channel has even experimented with viewer-created advertising.²²

Current expanded its online presence in September 2006 in a joint venture with Yahoo Inc. They launched four Web-based broadband channels (some content will be aired on the TV channel). Each channel, supported by advertising, deals with a specific subject area— “buzz” or popular Yahoo search subjects, “traveler,” “action” on action sports and “driver” dealing with automotive topics.

Current TV is even going international. In October 2006, the channel signed a deal with British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) to start a version of the viewer-created digital-video news format for the United Kingdom and Ireland.²³

The buzz around the channel is largely connected to its potential rather than to its performance right now, especially given the changing media landscape and growing appetite for viewer-created content. According to the New York Times, it has lived up to its billing as a network that gives its audience a voice in the programming.²⁴

And based on response from its competition, the concept has appeal. In November 2005, MTV announced it would start pursuing viewer-created content and purchased the Internet hub “iFilms.”²⁵ More Recently, NBC has created a channel on YouTube to promote its programming, and CNN began CNN Exchange, a Web site dedicated to viewer-created content.

News as Comedy, or Comedy as News

For some years now, Americans have increasingly been getting daily news headlines and analysis from an unlikely source — Comedy Central. The network, owned by Viacom, currently has two of the most popular political news and satirical programs in America — the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report.

The Daily Show, launched in 1996, airs Monday to Thursday at 11 p.m. (ET). Its format is a mixture. The first half resembles a regular newscast with headlines and features (accompanied by satirical graphics and commentary), while the second half is more like a talk show, with a one-on-one guest interview.

The show launched with the former ESPN commentator Craig Kilborn as the host. In 1999, he resigned to start a late-night comedy-variety show on CBS and was replaced by Jon Stewart (who negotiated his name into the show’s title a year later). It is under Stewart’s tenure that the show has become a big success.

In 2006, the Daily Show averaged 1.6 million viewers (up 12% from 2005), Comedy Central reports.²⁶ The year also saw ratings jump 12% — the show’s best performance in the last 10 years, according to the channel. Survey data collected by the Pew Research Center also indicates a surge in popularity. According to its biennial news consumption survey, viewership doubled from 2004 to 2006 (from 3% to 6% of respondents).²⁷

The program also has a strong following online, where it is available in short video segments soon after the actual broadcast. According to Comedy Central executives, the Daily Show was the most popular section on the network’s Web site in 2006, drawing 2.8 million viewers a month.²⁸

The show is not just attracting viewers, but impressing media critics as well. Since 1999, the show has won 5 Emmy awards and two Peabody awards; all credited to Stewart, former executive producer Ben Karlin and the head writer, David Javerbaum.²⁹

Building on the show’s success, Comedy Central introduced a spin-off, the Colbert Report, in October 2005.³⁰ It also runs four days a week for half an hour, at 11:30 p.m. ET — directly after the Daily Show (and promoted at the end of it every night).

Anchored by Stephen Colbert, previously one of the Daily Show’s popular correspondents, the Colbert Report is more a satire of the talk-show culture, particularly of the O’Reilly Factor, with Colbert playing a self-important know-it-all correspondent.³¹

Helped by a large lead-in audience, the Colbert Report has also proved a hit, and has helped Comedy Central stretch its audience later into the night. It generated 1.2 million total viewers in 2006.³² That was 60% more than the program that aired in that time slot in 2005, a talk show called Too Late with Adam Corrolla.

Online, the Colbert Report also ranked just behind the Daily Show with a total of 2.5 million viewers. According to Comedy Central, site views for the fourth quarter of 2006 grew 165% over the same quarter in 2005 (when the show launched).³³

Even with such success, the Comedy Central shows still trail late-night programming on broadcast TV. As of December 2006, the late-night network shows had double or more the audience of the Daily Show. According to the trade magazine Media Life, NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno leads the pack of late-night network shows, with an average of 6.2 million viewers in December 2006. It is followed by CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman (4.2 million viewers) and then by ABC’s hard-news Nightline (3.2 million).³⁴

But Doug Herzog, President of Comedy Central, believes that era is over. He was quoted in the Los Angeles Times in 2005 as saying of the network shows that “those traditional formats are growing tired, and younger viewers are growing tired of them.”³⁵ There is some evidence that men 18 to 34 years old are moving from late-night broadcast shows to cable.³⁶

Media and advertising executives have notices the channel’s success as well, attributing it to both effective counter-programming and to the shows’ ability to get away with more daring content (they are free from the FCC content restrictions) at that hour.³⁷

Whether or not they can overtake network audiences, the success of both the Daily Show and the Colbert Report is undeniable. So much so, indeed, that Fox News is planning a satirical news show of its own. With one season confirmed in March, the show is planned to be a weekly, shown Sunday nights, with a “decidedly non-liberal bent,” unlike the Comedy Central shows.³⁸

Footnotes

1. Shelley Emling, “British Media Crave U.S. Audience; Political Ideology, Better Coverage Cited,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 18, 2006

2. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “Online Papers Modestly Boost Newspaper Readership,” July 30, 2006. Online at: http://people-press.org/reports/questionnaires/282.pdf (Q56 and Q57)

3. David Bauder, “BBC World News Breaks into U.S. Market,” Associated Press, June 1, 2006. See also Jon Friedman, “The BBC Hopes to Attract U.S. Viewers,” MarketWatch.com, July 3, 2006.

4. Robert Macmillan, “Britons Wants U.S. to Read All About it,” Reuters, July 9, 2006

5. Besides the well-known American Dave Marash, News personalities hired by Al-Jazeera English include Sir David Frost (from the BBC), David Foster (Sky News) and Riz Khan (CNN).

6. Paul Farhi, “Al Jazeera’s U.S. Face,” Washington Post, November 15, 2006

7. Ibid.

8. Gail Shister, “ U.S. Indifference Dismays Al-Jazeera English Anchor,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 15, 2006

9. Hassan M. Fatah, “A New Al Jazeera with a Global Focus,” New York Times, November 13, 2006

10. The channel launched with 390 employees, including 180 journalists. About France 24, on the France 24 Web site – www.france24.com

11. MHz network reaches 4.9 million viewers throughout the entire Washington metro area via broadcast, cable and satellite. http://www.mhznetworks.org/about/whoweare

12. MHz Network Press Release, “MHz Launches France 24,” December 7, 2006. Online at: http://www.mhznetworks.org/news/2243.

13. The official explanation is that Chirac’s interest grew from the 2001 terror attacks in the U.S., and that the channel will be one way to correct the growing misunderstandings among cultures. John Ward Anderson, “All News All the Time, and Now in French,” Washington Post, December 7, 2006

14. John Ward Anderson, “All News All the Time, and Now in French,” Washington Post, December 7, 2006

15. Dan Carlin, “CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera… and France 24?,” Business Week, December 4, 2006

16. Karen Tumulty & Laura Locke, “Al Gore: businessman,” Time Magazine, August 8, 2005

17. Stephen Warley, “Youth News on Demand,” www.TVSpy.com, September 14, 2005. According to recent studies, teenagers and young adults prefer the Internet over traditional media, consume news at their convenience and want the opportunity to participate in the overall newsgathering process.

18. The editorial process for selecting which viewer segments to air involves both Current TV staff and outsiders. Current TV editors pick the segments they consider good for airing and then post them on the Web site, www.current.tv. Viewers can then view them on the site and vote on which ones run on the channel.

19. Jacques Steinberg, “For Gore, a reincarnation on the other side of the camera,” the New York Times, July 25, 2005

20. It inherited this number of subscribers because it took over the channel space, also known as bandwidth, of an older channel, NewsWorld International (NWI).

21. Joe Garofoli, “Gore’s TV Idea Seems More Current,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 14, 2006

22. Randi Schmelzer, “Current TV tries democratizing ads,” Ad Week, September 26, 2005

23. BSkyB is received by 8.2 million households in the British Isles. Tom Steinhart-Threlkeld, “Current TV Heads Overseas,” MultiChannel News, October 6, 2006

24. Jacques Steinberg, “For Gore, a reincarnation on the other side of the camera,” the New York Times, July 25 2005

25. James Hibberd, “Progress report: the new nets,” Television Week, November 14, 2005

26. Viewership data provided by Comedy Central Corporate Communications, January 8, 2007

27. The Pew survey contrasts the show with Fox News’s O’Reilly Factor, which is watched regularly by a just slightly higher number — 9% — of respondents. The O’Reilly Factor averages 2 million viewers every night, and is considered the top-rated cable news show in the country (see Cable TV Audience).

28. Viewership data provided by Comedy Central Corporate Communications, January 8, 2007

29. In a move that took many media experts by surprise, Karlin resigned from the Daily Show in December 2006. The New York Times reported that Javerbaum had wanted to leave as well but had been persuaded to stay. Jacques Steinberg, “The Executive Producer of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report is Leaving,” New York Times, December 2, 2006

30. Jon Stewart’s company, Busboy Productions, launched the show. See Howard Kurtz, “TV's Newest Anchor: A Smirk in Progress,” Washington Post, October 10, 2005

31. Howard Kurtz, “TV’s Newest Anchor: A Smirk in Progress,” Washington Post, October 10, 2005

32. Viewership data provided by Comedy Central Corporate Communications, January 8, 2007

33. These do not represent unique viewers. Data received from Comedy Central Corporate Communications on January 8, 2007.

34. Late-Night Ratings sourced from Nielsen Television Index in Toni Fitzgerald, “Dayparts Update,” Media Life Magazine, January 5, 2007

35. Scott Collins, “Cable is Up Late, Plotting TV Talk Show’s Demise,” Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2006

36. Examples of the trend include the success of Cartoon Network’s “adult swim” shows — cartoons that are adult-oriented, such as Family Guy — and ESPN’s SportsCenter at 11 p.m. Mark Glassman, “Cable Shows are Stealing Male Viewers from Broadcast TV,” New York Times, May 9, 2005

37. Scott Collins, “Cable is Up Late, Plotting TV Talk Show’s Demise,” Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2006

38. Paul J. Gough, “Fox News Channel Preps Right Leaning Satire,” Hollywood Reporter, November 20, 2006