Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Why are people paying attention to the One-Percenters?


Oddly enough my source, USA Today, was just linked on the Drudge Report. Not only Right Wing Radio but MainStream Media, that So-Called Liberal Media, takes its cues from FoX News. Everyone knows they are just the GOP TV arm but have you ever seen how few people link or watch or read?

Top U.S. news and media sites on April 16, Share of visits, Change vs. 4/9
1. Yahoo News 8.69% + 62%
2. MSNBC 7.56% + 161%
3. CNN.com 5.56% + 59%
4. Weather Channel 4.30% - 38%
5. Google News 1.87% + 6%
6. Fox News 1.72% + 64%
7. Drudge Report 1.71% + 14%
8. Yahoo Weather 1.70% - 32%
9. New York Times 1.51% - 2%
10. AOL News 1.3% + 37%
11. ABCnews.com 1.14% + 245%
Source: Hitwise

When it is important news Fox News share of ratings is !.7% On a normal day it is just over 1%. Why is anyone listening to the yammering yahoos only 1% of net users get their news from?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd seen similar statistics somewhere else and marveled at the results. I'd put it this way, if "Americans" (whatever that means anymore) aren't looking at or getting their news from these sources, i.e. aren't watching t.v. news, from whence do they get their information? Are we to believe that the absentees rely solely on radio, newspapers or the web? I did a quit sum up and came up with 31/33% are getting news from the reported sources. Are we to assume that 66% aren't paying any attention at all or that a significant portion aren't?

That would begin to explain 1) the awesome poor quality of candidates and 2) the awesome poor quality of elected officials and 3) the obvious arrogance of many elected officials. They rule by fiat because no one's watching! And they know that no one is watching!

Anonymous said...

Here is my answer:

24 hour news channels have a lot of influence because certain segments of people keep them on all the time.

My elderly father watches TV 12 hours a day (not good, btw). the only two channels he watches are Fox News and CNN. (He's not even a news junkie--that's the sad thing).

Demographics for Fox skew very old because old people watch a lot of TV.

Another thought is that certain media sources influence others. NYT doesn't have that much direct presence in people's lives, and yet their columns are reprinted in multiple places; they also influence lots of other journalists.

Also: did you notice that there is a "Fox News" shop in the Houston Intercontinental Airport? They are trying to create a franchise. Why anyone would ever want to have a franchise named after Fox is beyond me?

Gary said...

I know people who watch The Weather Channel 24/7.

One thing that perhaps wasn't immediately clear is that this is online news sites only - not the print and broadcast media. Fox News broadcast has higher ratings which reflects that internet news junkies are smarter.

People in the media and positions of power read the NYT and the WSJ and the WP which have inordinate influence. I am getting a free NYT at work occasionally, great reporters except for politics and some of their international and occasional reviewers.