Wow, king of the carriage return or what. Umma fix that.
Nobody "desires" yuge tornadoes, just as nobody "agrees with" that tractor trailer engulfed in flames on the shoulder of the highway. BUT THEY ALL GRAB ATTENTION. And that's what ratings are measuring.... ATTENTION
Ok...I agree with that.
But...if Fox News was number one for years, and suddenly it is not...and a mass number of their views have flocked to Newsmax and OANN... coinciding with a huge post election backlash...we can extrapolate nothing from that?
Because it seems like we can...
Yes. We can extrapolate that Fox Noise will be making a bit less money from its commercials ---- this period --- whereas Spewsmax and MOANN presumably will have some base to begin selling marks. ('Marks" as in the target of a con man, i.e. the gullible audience who oozed in there). I'm presuming here that they had no advertising, or didn't even exist, before now.
On the larger scale we can extrapolate that all the run-up to, and extended counting of, and endless farting into the wind about fake "frauds" in, the election, not to mention the ongoing pandemic and its new vaccines as well as winter weather, have served to pump up
everybody's TV ratings who dabbles in any kind of news. What we cannot extrapolate is "why" this one or that one rose or fell. Those sources may of course
guess what they did that worked or didn't work to draw marks (and they will. they always do). But for us to sit on the sideline and declare those dynamics is just more farting into the wind. THEY don't even know.
Again ---- notice what the OP uses for his source for this rating sheet:
Ad Week. That's what ratings exist for --- advertising. Advertisers don't need to know why they have this audience here and that audience there. All they need to know is "how much you got?". And that's all ratings tells them; that, and the particulars of who they are.
It seems like we're saying the same thing. Fewer people are watching Fox News. They are feeling a backlash in the one place it counts...ad revenue.
So what are you arguing exactly? That ratings aren't designed to tell us exactly why fewer people are watching?
Yes. Exactly.
And it goes back to the fact that ATTENTION is what gets ratings -- that's what ratings mean. Therefore in order to get high ratings, an entity has to gather ATTENTION. Not "assent", not "sympathy", not "agreement", not any kind of touchy-feely stuff ---- just ATTENTION. That's all it takes. And obviously they'll sink to any manner of visual sewage to get it ---- that's why TV was described as a "vast wasteland" --- and that was sixty years ago.
The fact is you'll sit and watch an ad for a truck that can tow and asteroid if you've just been teased about something you vehemently DISAGREE with. Doesn't matter. They have your ATTENTION either way. Emotional hooks. That's also why they just framed it as "when we come back we'll tell you how drinking water is bad for you" --- because they want you to sit through that commercial.
That's what it's entirely about, that's what it's ALWAYS been entirely about as long as there has been commercial advertising in broadcasting. It ain't about pushing this "position" or pushing back on that "position" ---- it's all about
selling you shit you don't need. That's advertising, and that's where the money comes from. The basic reason commercial broadcasters EXIST AT ALL is simply so they can gather enough gullible ears or eyeballs together so that they can sell them shit they don't need and profit therefrom.
Presidential approval ratings also don't tell us why the respondents disappove. But we still use them as a metric.
Sure. As an
approval poll. That's what an approval poll measures -- opinion.
IT DOES NOT MEASURE ATTENTION.
Opinion ≠ attention.
Moreover, detailed approval polls DO tell us what respondents approve or disapprove of, to the extent they lay out those topics. Because they're
opinion polls, not
attention polls.
Just as we use cable news ratings as a metric.
No. Invalid comparison of apples and kumquats.
The valid comparator would be the head count at, say, a concert event. "How many people bought tickets" . That tells you how much money you made but it doesn't explain WHY those people came. If X bazillion people go to see a movie, you've been informed you have a "hit" movie but you haven't been informed WHY you have a "hit" movie.
In this instance it would seem that the revolt against Fox News' coverage of the election and post-election has diminished their total viewers.
If you would like to tender a different hypothesis, I'd be happy to consider it.
There is no basis for that yet-again emotional conclusion ("revolt"). Unless of course you have personally gone forth and surveyed millions of TV viewers about their
opinion. But then, you have an opinion poll, not a ratings book
www.adweek.com
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