On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 9:16 AM, televisiongirl <[email protected]>wrote:
> > While it is a good point that the most helpful comparison is really to a >> year ago (and maybe even to 2 years ago, which was an election year, or 4 >> years ago, which was the last presidential election year), to be fair, the >> point here (expanded on in what looks like the original source in the Daily >> News here: >> http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/sean-hannity-big-loser-2012-election-article-1.1228269) >> was that Hannity has lost a bigger fraction of his ratings than has >> O’Reilly (50% vs 30%), the implication being that Hannity relied more on >> the faith-based political posturing of Dick Morris and the like than did >> O-Reilly (I would not know if this is true), and so alienated more >> disillusioned, isolated viewers). >> > > > But O'Reilly has much bigger ratings than Hannity. Say O'Reilly has > 500,000 adults 25-54, Hannity has 300K - not out of line for what they > usually do. Both lose 150K after election day as people get away from news > and into typical entertainment programming. O'Reilly will be down -30% and > Hannity down -50%. I'd like to see the actual numbers than the > percentages. > > Same with the MSNBC and CNN folks. Hannity and Maddow are fairly close in > the ratings but I'm willing to be the audience that O'Reilly lost is > probably still larger than Piers Morgan's audience. > > Sorry - the percentage stuff bothers me. It is like when you see the live > plus seven day lift. Yes, "Nikita" had the largest percentage lift but the > actual lift for "Modern Family" was larger than the total audience for > "Nikitia" and any other CW show combined. Show the actual numbers. > I don't think there is any need to apologize, it is a fair point you are making, but the media articles cited in this thread just do not provide the number of viewers, just the percentage lost. When this was first posted I did go to TVBTN to try to get the actual numbers to do the year-to-date comparisons, but I did not find any easy way to get them, though I assume there are on the site somewhere if you spend enough time digging around. While the point is fair that the actual numbers have to be looked at to investigate the possibility you raise, I am not sure how likely it is. I mean, I really am not sure, not that I am skeptical. I just don't have enough of a feel for Fox News, and the differences between their programs. For what you are suggesting to be true, there would have to be something like 150 thousand people who during election season start watching FN, regardless of what show is on or who is hosting, and then stop watching after the election. In that case both Hannity and O'Reilly would lose the same number of viewers after the election, but it would be a larger percentage of the former since he has a smaller number of total viewers. It could work that way, but it also could work that during election season each show on FN gets a differential increase in viewers; Hannity might get a larger percentage increase because he tells conservatives who otherwise are not that interested in the news what they want to hear and makes them feel better, while O'Reilly is already drawing closer to his ceiling of viewers who are interested in his views, and is not quite as much of a pacifier anyway. In that case, a guy like Hannity would gain more than O'Reilly during the election season, and lose more than him after. As you say, we would need to see the actual numbers to tell. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
