Following up on my column of last week about the malaise of Fox News in the waning days of the Bush era come the first-quarter ratings for 2008, and they continue the trend I mentioned: CNN beat out Fox in prime time for the quarter, among the prime advertiser demographic of 25-to-54-year-olds. It was also a fairly big quarter for MSNBC, up 68 percent in that demo compared with 90 percent for CNN and 12 percent for Fox.
But we’re fair and balanced at Tuned In, so I should note that:
* CNN is Time’s corporate sibling, not that that means I get invited to Wolf Blitzer’s barbecues.
* Fox is still comfortably the top-rated network in overall viewers.
* CNN (and MSNBC) benefited a lot from the big primary news season. In essence, viewers come to those two networks more for breaking news, tuning in when there’s a surprise event or a big primary or debate. Fox’s viewers tend to come more for the other stuff—the opinion shows, Neil Cavuto’s seductive wiles, what have you—so they neither disappear when news is slow nor spike a lot when there’s big news.
* That 25-to-54-year-old demographic? Not exactly the most typical age range for TV news viewers in general.