Fox News Obliterates The Competition With Election Night Coverage...more viewers than any competitor...
NORVELL ROSE — NOVEMBER 6, 2014
As the extent of the Democrats midterm massacre continues to be evaluated at federal, state and local levels around the country, the scope of a different election-night outcome is already known — a decisive media victory. And what a victory it was for Fox News.
The cable network’s coverage of the returns literally wiped out the competition — topping even the broadcast networks’ special reports on the midterm results.
One can only imagine that network executives at NBC, CBS and ABC must be wondering what in the world happened…and what’s ahead in their ratings battle with the increasingly dominant cable news giant.
And as for the cable competition for Fox News — judging by election-night audience numbers, it was literally no contest. The ratings for MSNBC and CNN combined didn’t stand up to the Fox News journalistic juggernaut.
Via TV ratings watchdog mediabistro.com:
Fox News Channel was the most-watched network — on broadcast and on cable — during coverage of the midterm elections. Fox News beat CNN and MSNBC in both total viewers and the A25-54 demo, combined during primetime hours.
The New York Times article on the TV ratings, as one might expect, started off with an observation that could be interpreted as trying to diminish the election-night viewer dominance for the Fox News net:
With interest down sharply across the board in television coverage of the midterm elections, Fox News had about as big a night as the Republican Party, drawing the biggest audience not only in cable but also beating the broadcast networks’ limited coverage.
But then the Times report goes on to note the extraordinary accomplishment of Fox News in head-to-head competition:
In the 10 p.m. hour, which was the only one where the news divisions of the broadcast networks covered the results, Fox had more viewers than any competitor, with 6.6 million. CBS News was next with only 5.4 million. Fox also had the edge in the age group results with 1.825 million viewers to 1.548 million for CBS.
The cynics at deadline.com played up the “comedy” of election-night news:
Comedy was a leitmotif of the coverage — not surprising in a saturated news marketplace where all the unhappy hawkers are competing for the next generation of 25-54 year olds, or — as, someone or other said last night, the next generation of voters once they too become really old.
And the image deadline.com chose to illustrate its point about serious news nets going for the laugh — the so-called “campaign cowboys” on Fox:
http://www.westernjournalism.com/on-top-of-dems-disaster-heres-another-awesome-election-night-result-that-will-leave-you-cheering/#m1eoiLR4EzaTKJgo.99