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. Fox News labeled the victory historic, because though the network also had the most viewers in 2010, the last time Republicans scored sweeping victories in the midterms, this time, during the 10 p.m. hour, Fox also managed to beat all its competitors in the category preferred by news advertisers, viewers between the ages of 25 and 54. But in a sign of the depth of the lack of interest in this election — or perhaps politics in general — every network was down substantially from its viewing levels of four years ago. That included Fox News, which despite being able to report on coast-to-coast victories for the party supported by most of its viewers, was down about 10 percent in total viewers and 32 percent among the viewers that news advertisers pay for. Other totals last night reflected the lax interest in the results. CNN and MSNBC were both down 13 percent in total viewers. CNN was down 12 percent in the 25-54 group; MSNBC was down 22 percent. 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. According to Fox’s figures, four years ago in the 10 p.m. hour Fox News had 6.9 million viewers and 2.6 million in the 25-54 group. NBC was second that year in viewers with 6.3 million total viewers, but it was marginally above Fox in the 25-54 category with 2.8 million. (NBC News reported different figures from four years ago, which had the network trailing in the 25-54 group that year, but the figures are muddled because NBC was only on 48 minutes with national coverage and then switched to local stations.) In a sign of just how attuned political viewers now seem to be toward watching what they perceive as the home team channel, in 2006, when the midterms were far better for Democrats, viewing on Fox News was starkly lower. The network had fewer than half as many viewers tuning in that year to watch the Republicans do poorly as it had in either 2010 or 2014, when the Republicans swept the board.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 03:07:47 +0000
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