While MSNBC and CNN slug it out over last place, for 50 consecutive quarters (150 straight months, 12.5 years) Fox News has handily beat its left-wing cable news competition.
Though FNC, like all cable news networks, saw year-to-year losses in the second quarter, its average 1.6 million viewers and 267,000 adults 25-54 still gives it large margins of victory in primetime — where its biggest competition might be itself. In recent weeks, 9 p.m. anchor Megyn Kelly has out-rated her lead-in, reigning cable news champ Bill O’Reilly, on several occasions.
This winning streak has had its most profound effect on CNN. The once-dominant “most trusted name in news” is now a public laughingstock running away from news programming as fast as it possibly can. At this rate, in five years, CNN will be just another Discovery or National Geographic cable channel that’s still on the verge of going out business thanks to competition from Streaming Television.
If you want to know how corrupted and Borg-like the institution of journalism is, just try and fathom the fact that no one has tried to replicate the success of Fox News. Given the choice between holding Barack Obama accountable and appealing to Middle America or becoming extinct, our Media Class chose the blue pill.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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