Ideology has nothing to do with it because ideology is not what sells. That's just the tool to get into the viewer's mind. What sells, and what Fox Noise sells, is emotion. Particularly, Fear. It's a long-established known known that fear and loathing and gossip and conspiracy and sensationalism are a gold mine in pseudojournalism -- by which I mean "journalism" outlets that are dedicated not to informing its audience but rather to enriching themselves.
Straight news does not sell and never has. It's not a marketable commodity. Emotion is.
Nobody knows this LCD goldmine better than Rupert Murdoch, who built his media empire on the cheap gossip rags we see at the stupormarket checkout line. Fox Noise continued the model --- it's basically not a news channel except as window dressing and filler. What it is is a gossip channel, using politician-celebrities instead of media/movie-celebrities. Its moneymaking content is all about conspiracies and fears and tensions and conflicts. It's always about people, not about policies, and any time an abstract idea like a policy is introduced it is immediately personalized. Because only when you personalize can you polarize, and polarization draws fans like a sports event. Because you can't get emotional about abstract ideas, but you can very much get emotional about the evil monster behind it.
So as soon as that abstract is personalized and polarized, onto the screen comes the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, in whatever form applies, along with suggestive chyrons running along the bottom planting seeds of further fears without ever making a point, presented by either buxom bimbos in short skirts or old guys pounding the table -- ALL of which is specifically engineered to incite an emotional dependence (which means staying tuned, which means viewer loyalty, euphemized as "trust") so that the box has a vulnerable waiting and willing maw into which it can pour advertising and charge the advertiser top dollar.
That is after all the one and only purpose and significance of broadcast ratings: to measure how much a commercial costs. Because obviously if you can deliver more eyeballs, you can charge more money.
It's really not that complicated. I wish the audience would stop watching the dancing puppets once in a while and look up to see who's pulling the strings and why. Do a Dorothy and pull back the curtain. It's revealing.
