This past year was another very good one for the Fox News Channel, which continued its dominance of cable news (in January FNC will have been the #1 cable news channel for 10 years in a row).
The Associated Press, in reporting on the most recent Nielsen ratings, points out that FNC’s average viewership exceeded CNN and MSNBC combined, both in prime time and for the entire day. Fox typically had 1.87 million viewers in prime time this year. The top 13 programs in cable news all aired on Fox. And Fox was the only cable news network to place in the top 10 list of cable channels in both prime time and entire day.
Fox’s ratings lead may well extend in 2012, given both the forthcoming GOP primary race and presidential election. And one day years from now, when political passions cool and his achievements are put in perspective, Roger Ailes will be seen as one of the most significant journalistic figures of the last half-century. He is the man who is most responsible for shattering the monopoly on television news. It’s little wonder he and his network inspire rage in some liberal quarters. And there’s little doubt it bothers Ailes not at all.
Fox appears more like a Beauty Contest than a news channel. It does pretty well as such. The other channels, on the other hand, seem to find it very difficult to be "fair and balanced". And rarely succeed. Except for MSNBC which NEVER succeeds.
LIberals rage at Fox to make it seem more important than it really is. Unfortunately, Fox's viewership is still tiny compared to the massive heft of the liberal MSM.
On Decmeber 6th Fox led off their segment about the election protests in Russia with 23 seconds of footage of riots in Greece. People that tuned into Fox that evening saw young men in warm-ups throwing molitav cocktails in front of the Greek National Bank as a "reporter" talked about Russian politics. There were no riots in Russia, though. No molitav cocktails. No clashes with police. Fox engages in biased sensationalism just like CNN and MSNBC. They should be ashamed of themselves.