In the last month Beck was on the air his show averaged 1.6 million viewers, a figure that has now been matched by The Five after hovering in the 1.3 million viewer range for months. That’s good news for Fox News, though the recovery is still far from complete.
While the show is by far the runaway leader in its time slot, it still hasn’t quite caught up to where Beck was in the critical A25-54 demographic. Beck was attracting between 450,000 and 550,000 viewers in that demo, which is very important to advertisers. By comparison, The Five is averaging between 300,000 and 400,000 viewers. And even though advertisers have returned to the network, Fox can’t charge the same rates as they did when Beck was on the air due to the lower ratings in the demo.
Nevertheless, the network is in pretty good shape with what promises to be a very hot election year in 2012. That should boost viewer interest and ratings and lead to another very successful and profitable year at Fox News.
Liberals thought they had scored a major victory by seemingly toppling Beck at Fox News, but they have found out that Fox has many weapons in its show arsenal and they don’t give up that easily.
In the meantime MSNBC and CNN are left to continue fighting over Fox News’ ratings scraps, and remain far behind the leader in cable news.
Don Irvine——
Bio and Archives
Don Irvine is the chairman of Accuracy in Media and its sister organization Accuracy in Academia. As the son of Reed Irvine, who launched AIM in 1969, he developed an understanding of media bias at an early age, and has been actively involved with AIM for over 30 years.
