MSM TV News - Who is Watching? Not Many!

Folks have this misguided belief that mainstream media is a controlling force that has the capacity to indoctrinate and influence 310 million Americans. What once was true is no longer true and trust in MSM is at an all time low.

Gallop says media trust is at all time low. “No Duh” says news ratings.

The age of the Keith Olbermanns, Anderson Coopers, Bill O’Reillys and other personalities whose style and connections with their audiences were a stand in for the declining trust in news overall are now withering as well. Most of these people are now the face of the shouting matches that pass for news. Now I think viewers also blame them as part of the problem instead of turning to them as an honest broker of reputable news. None of these people report news anymore. Rather they perform a form a free-flow talk. Branded opinion.

The decline in Cable news viewership  is a trend that commenced in in 2010.

Fox, CNN, MSNBC news viewership declines 13.7%

A recent study found CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News all lost viewers in 2010 for the first time in 12 years.

A Pew research journalism group study revealed a combined 13.7 percent drop in viewership, the largest decline of any news sector and of all three networks since the group began keeping track.

Additionally, broadcast news overall across the US declined by 3.4 percent in 2010 with cable news being hit the hardest.

Prime time cable news shows fell by 16 percent, with CNN taking the greatest hit with a 37 percent primetime viewership decline. Fox dropped by 11 percent while MSNBC fared the best with a 5 percent decrease.

The above data is based on 2010 figures.  Fast forward to today and it's clearly evident that the trend of declining TV cable news viewers continues as cable TV news sheds more and more viewers.  It's a rupturing of what was once a consistently reliable viewer base.  CNN appears to be getting hit the hardest because it's suffered the biggest decline in viewers.

July 2012 Ratings: CNN Continues to Struggle

CNN was down double digits across the board in July. Compared to July 2011, the network is -20% in Total Viewers and -23% in A25-54 in Total Day. In primetime, CNN is down -23% in Total Viewers and -26% in the demographic. MSNBC and Fox are also shedding viewers.

While Fox still leads in total primetime viewership (Primetime: FNC: 2.049, MSNBC: 964 CNN: 347, HLN: 270), Fox is getting clobbered on the coveted 25-54 age group which means that the young have no use for Fox News. This does not bode well for the future of Fox News, a network that largely caters to entertaining old neocon statist Republicans who are dying off.  Moreover, a nightly audience of 2 million (Fox) is quite pitiful while the situation is even more pitiful for MSNBC (few shows even crack 1 million viewers) and CNN (347,000 nightly viewers). The ratings are here.

What does this tell us? Effectively, it tells us that the news has moved. The Internet, the blog universe and the rise of independent news sites are definitely having a profoundly negative effect on mainstream media. Also, print mainstream media isn't faring much better than broadcast news and continues to lose newspaper readers.

Could the first amendment still be alive in America? It appears so!