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The Spectacle Blog
What would happen if CBS reporter Dan Rather were punched in the stomach by some goons on live television back in the day? Well, actually, he was. On the floor of the 1968 Democratic Convention. Here’s the clip.
Do you think this was blacked out by CBS? Of course not. Walter Cronkite, sitting up in the anchor booth, exploded in anger on air: “I think we got a bunch of thugs here, Dan” he snapped, the clip later shown over and over.
Has CBS shown what happened to Fox contributor Steven Crowder the other day? When Crowder, like Rather, was punched by “a bunch of thugs”?
Not a prayer. As Newsbusters reports, CBS totally ignored the attack on Crowder, as was true of NBC and ABC.
All of which helps explain why our friends at Fox News have once again spent another year clobbering the liberal cable channels in the ratings.
As the Daily Caller reports here, this makes the 11th year in a row — say again the 11th year in a row — that Fox has beaten the pants off of MSNBC and the once-dominant CNN.
The 2012 data comes as always from the Nielsen Media research folks. And it is indeed amazing data when you consider the hammerlock liberal networks once had in the ratings department.
Fox wins the day outright in eleven out of the first eleven categories in total viewers, and wins the first seven with that always coveted 25-54 demographic.
Our friend Sean Hannity has almost twice or more the audience of his competitors.
In fact, the entire Fox lineup runs the table. To put names and faces to all of this, it means the combined efforts of the various Fox shows, beginning with the morning Fox and Friends and running through the day with hosts Bill Hemmer, Martha McCallum, Jon Scott, Jenna Lee, Megyn Kelly, Shepherd Smith, Neil Cavuto, The Five, Brett Baier, Smith again, and on to O’Reilly, Hannity and Greta Van Susteren, are cleaning the collective clocks of their rivals.
Somewhere along the line here it might be noted that professionally speaking Fox simply gives good television. A vastly superior product gushing forth daily not to mention hourly. For which Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch deserve immense credit.
The defeat of Mitt Romney can easily make some believe that the efforts of presenting a fair and balanced network with a decided positive focus on conservatism is somehow to no avail.
This is a mistake — and a big one.
The dominance of the liberal media in the pre-Fox era did not prevent the election of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, or George H.W. Bush, not to mention the election of a GOP Congress in 1994 as led by Newt Gingrich. It is a mistake to equate network ratings with the ability of candidate A or B to win the presidency or the Congress.
The importance of Fox — and talk radio as well, the latter an institution that was revolutionized by Rush Limbaugh — is that the monopoly on the media narrative of what is happening in America and the world has been not just broken but shattered.
For good.
One need only look at the recent dust-up in Lansing, Michigan, with Big Labor to understand how the game works. Every bit of that story made Fox News — both the labor side of the story… and the incredible story of labor goons physically attacking Fox contributor Steven Crowder and tearing down the tent of the people from Americans for Prosperity.
For that matter, when CBS correspondent Lara Logan was attacked in Cairo a while back Fox made a point of reporting the story, with Hannity discussing it several times.
Why? Not as some sort of favor to CBS. But because — hello? — the attack on Logan was news.
News. And unlike the liberal media, Fox News is about news.
One need look only to the angry whining coming from uber-leftist Robert F. Kennedy,Jr. the other day to understand how traumatized the American Left has become because of the success of Fox and talk radio.
Said RFK Jr. as reported here by Newsbusters:
There’s two things happening. One is the influence of big money in politics, and the other is the right-wing control of the American media, particularly starting with Fox News. 95 percent of talk radio in our country is right-wing, and you need, according to Pew survey, and you, so a whole section of our country that that’s what they’re hearing. They wake up in the morning, when they go to bed at night.
Twenty-two percent of Americans say their primary news source is Fox News. I think that that has, that has, it’s divided our country in a way that we haven’t been divided probably since the Civil War, and that it’s empowered these large corporations to get certain kinds of politicians and ideologues who are in the United States Congress elected — the Tea Party ideologues who control the Republican Party.
Well.
It is always amusing to see the horror that liberals display at the realization that ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek and all the rest no longer control the narrative of the day. Not to put too fine a point on this, but in a few weeks Newsweek in print will simply cease to exist, so badly did its flag carrying of the liberal narrative damage its circulation.
So as the end-of-year reflections begin to pour forth — here’s to Fox News. Congratulations to Hannity and all the Fox crew from the on-camera talent to the behind-the-scenes production crews to those working in the executive suites.
A job well done. The American television audience has just given them all a well-deserved two-thumbs up yet again.
And a Merry Christmas to you to, Mr. Kennedy.
View all comments (28) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Jeffrey Lord
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/12/14/fox-hannity-clobber-cable-riva
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RCV| 12.14.12 @ 11:44AM
If " ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek and all the rest no longer control the narrative of the day", can you please stop whining about liberal media domination?
C. Vernon Crisler | 12.14.12 @ 11:54AM
I believe Jeffrey is too optimistic. Everywhere you turn in media today, outside of Fox or some talk radio, it's dominated by the left, or by nihilists and cynics.
Santiago| 12.14.12 @ 12:18PM
We won't "whine" about liberal media domination, we'll just continue to highlight the lies and omission of facts.
Tom Kyba| 12.14.12 @ 1:46PM
No.
Occam's Tool| 12.14.12 @ 2:26PM
Actually, though, Fox is all alone, and the others dominate things altogether, RCV. And, sometimes, the results are disgusting. For example, could you imagine the LA Times keeping a cover on a videotape of Romney attending a David Duke meeting? Well, despite 500,000 Jews in LA, they did that for the Khalidi get together.
The Liberal newsmedia is dying because Liberals don't care about news as their ideology blinds them, and normal middle class Americans are tired of being crapped on by the MSM. The problem is, Conservative voters sat on their hands this election. Romney truly pissed them off.
DRed| 12.14.12 @ 3:10PM
I don't understand, Occam. I watched Fox before the election. Romney had all the momentum. There was tremendous enthusiasm behind Romney, which is why all the polls except the Republican ones were wrong.
Occam's Tool| 12.14.12 @ 3:53PM
They watched, waited for the social issues red meat, waited for dramatic tax reform comments from Romney, decided that he was indeed a moderate, amnd let him die. I voted for him because I can tell this will not end well.
DRed| 12.14.12 @ 4:29PM
I'm not asking why conservatives didn't vote for Romney. I'm asking why Fox was reporting things that were clearly not true. You're a smart guy-read your comments the day before the election. You sound like a deluded idiot, and you're obviously not. So why were you so wrong? Because you were getting bullshit information from people who were telling you what you wanted to hear. Fox is about entertainment and pushing the Republican party's talking points. It's great at it, obviously, which is why they do so well in the ratings, but a network that's great at pumping out partisan propaganda isn't great for it's viewers.
jothepro| 12.15.12 @ 9:50AM
DRedass, maybe if you watched a little Fox news you wouldn't be so stupid. Oh wait, I take that back, because stupid people are stupid....
RCV| 12.16.12 @ 4:16PM
The reason Occam was so wrong, despite his intellect, is that he has accepted the right's canard that the media is biased toward the left and slants news and facts to fit that bias. Thus, the delusion that the polls were somehow "fixed" and that Obama didn't really have enthusiasm going for him. Unfortunately, Occam's comments reflect that he still shares that delusion despite his intelligence.
McClain | 12.14.12 @ 12:50PM
Tovarish! Samizdat is undermining us again. We have to find some method of destroying those state-of-the-art mimeograph machines or more people will ignore Pravda and Izvestia.
We must do something, Comrades, or this freedom of the press idea might catch on.
Robert Kennedy, DPUSA
Democrat Party, United States of America
stmichrick| 12.14.12 @ 1:02PM
Notice how they never take issue with WHAT IS SAID, only THE FACT THAT IT IS SAID.
They can't deal with news/talk that allows itself to be challenged. Left wing talk programs fail because they sound foolish. Feelings don't wear well with reality.
Kennedy is either totally out of touch with reality or is (more likely) insisting on total left wing propaganda from news programming, 24/7.
Mike in N.C.| 12.14.12 @ 1:49PM
Time for all of you Second Amendment clowns to join that POS Wayne LaPierre, president of the NRA, in putting out your usual BS and to make threatening calls to your elected officials. After all, what is a mere 27 lives when compared to your sacred right to own automatic weapons
Jeff| 12.14.12 @ 2:04PM
Time for you to politicize tragedy, again, Mike?
Time for you to join all those pro-abortion folks like President Obama and insist that abortion and a disrepect for human life had nothing to do this?
Maybe it's time to return prayer to school?
You won't go there, will you?
Mike in N.C.| 12.14.12 @ 2:14PM
Politicize a tragedy? Give me a break. It seems like right wingers are willing to accept any number of incidents like this one as acceptable collateral damage in the process of having unrestricted gun rights.
Tell me the NRA is politicizing all of the time.
Finally, as to your asinine effort to link abortion to this incident. Women who seek abortions are not the wanton killers of your fetid imagination.
Jeff| 12.14.12 @ 2:34PM
"Finally, as to your asinine effort to link abortion to this incident. "
I see. So in fact, you only want to discuss the politically correct version of this issue. Got it.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 12.14.12 @ 3:00PM
"right wingers are willing to accept any number of incidents like this one as acceptable collateral damage in the process of having unrestricted gun rights."
I'm mature enough to understand that bad things happen when people abuse their 2nd Amendment rights just as I understand that it is unreasonable for the government to kill you just because you say stupid things, as that would violate the 1st Amendment.
Occam's Tool| 12.14.12 @ 2:27PM
Criminals can always get guns if they want them. There are areas of Rotorua NZ that are very dangerous after dark, Mike.
Mike in N.C.| 12.14.12 @ 2:39PM
And this argument is somehow supposed to nullifiy the immoral work of the NRA?
Jeff| 12.14.12 @ 2:46PM
The immoral work of the NRA? Teaching law-abiding citizens how to correctly and safely handle guns?
The notion that someone intent on committing mass murder is going to restrained by abolishing the 2nd Amendment is laughable if typical. People who are fat will not be thin if we ban Ben and Jerry's. The other week a drunken NFL star killed his teammate...in a car. When do we ban cars? After all, cars are killing thousands of Americans a year.
Jeff| 12.14.12 @ 2:50PM
And by the way...the shooter in Connecticut targeted....his own mother. Who worked in the school. And the kids killed were apparently in her class, according to incoming news reports.
Perhaps its time to ban teachers? Mothers? Schools?
RCV| 12.16.12 @ 4:17PM
She didn't work at the school at all.
Occam's Tool| 12.14.12 @ 3:52PM
Chicago has strict gun control laws and the highest murder rate in the country. I do not think those laws do that which it is you want them to do. I do think that an armed teacher could have stopped this situation, however.
Sturmudgeon| 12.14.12 @ 5:19PM
You are most probably correct!
Crassus| 12.14.12 @ 5:17PM
Fox News is a fraud. They're not a conservative network. They're just a little less liberal than the likes of CNN, MSNBC, and the mainstream news networks. I've never understood why so many people bow down and worship at the shrine of Fox News. They're almost as brainwashed as the zombies who watch MSNBC.
2blumutts| 12.15.12 @ 12:28AM
Ease back Jeffery Lord, looks as if Fox's funny guy snipped and pasted his way to the front of the lens, again. Be sure, the guys who have gotten caught doing this snipping and pasting would be aiming for someone with Fox to do the expedient, as they are want to do, rather than the ethical. Bingo! And look who provided it for them. Crowder should be ashamed!
Brad| 12.16.12 @ 9:00PM
"Fox wins the day outright in eleven out of the first eleven categories in total viewers, and wins the first seven with that always coveted 25-54 demographic."
Wow. That's gonna come as a complete shock to some liberal morons who post at the Daily Caller. Several days ago, I went round and round with two morons who insisted that the ratings would show, and I quote, "Maddow and O'Donnell are beating Fox big with the coveted 25-54 demographic. Fox News' senile old viewers are dying off..."
Schadenfreude, anyone?
freecorder| 1.4.13 @ 5:02AM
Just download a youtube video of any of the Fox follies to see how bad they are. The Rove meltdown on election day was indicative.