Why is Glenn Beck so angry? Ratings.
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Did Glenn Beck just post a new ratings low for 2010?
How low (in the ratings) can Glenn Beck go?
This is soooooo weird. I had the impression that Glenn was moderately successful in the ratings. But, no. Clearly his ratings have been in a state of utter collapse at essentially every moment of his entire television career. The last headline is my favorite, considering it came from July 31, 2007. Solid prediction guys.
The same people have been trying to prove the same thing, idiotically, every day since then. Seriously, if Glenn has been collapsing in the ratings for this long—how do you even know who he is?
Since the final show has finally come, let’s look at the truth. To be thorough, we’ll examine every conceivable way that you could measure ratings success. Whenever possible, I’ll use January 2011/1st quarter numbers, because they offer the
least favorable comparisons for us. This is insanely lengthy, but I figured I’d do it once and get it over with.
1–Beck vs previous show airing on network in time slot
Glenn has increased the ratings of the 5pm time slot at Fox by 131% compared to the programming airing before his start. In case you don’t know how to read percentages, that’s doubling the ratings, plus another 31%.
2–Beck vs Lead-in on network
How did Glenn do in comparison to his lead in hour? He increased the ratings by about 95%.
3–Beck vs competition in time slot
This one is so easy that it’s probably not worth spending too much time on. We’ll use the quarterly ratings.
FOXN Beck 462
CNN Situation Room 210
the ratings I’m using include Situation Room’s 6pm hour which slightly increased the average. This was also a very good quarter for CNN with events like Egypt and the Tsunami where they excel. That being said—even using their inflated numbers, Glenn Beck beats its closest competition by 120%.
Remember, when Glenn took over the 5pm slot, both MSNBC and CNN were very close to winning that time slot, particularly through the election. In fact, in January ’09 on the days before Glenn took over, CNN actually tied Fox. Ummm…that didn’t happen afterwards.
**It should be noted here, that with the possible exception of legendary hit programs like American Idol, no show on television is judged by any standard other than #1, 2, or 3 on this list.
4–Beck vs Everyone else at 5pm combined
FOXN Beck 462
CNN Situation Room 210
MSNBC Hardball 168
HLN Showbiz 78
these numbers include Hardball’s 7pm rerun, which raised its average significantly. Still, Glenn Beck defeated all other cable news shows combined at 5pm, even in a supposedly terrible quarter. As a TV executive I was speaking with recently told me: “Glenn Beck is the highest rated regularly scheduled show in the history of cable news at 5pm.”
5–Beck vs Everyone else at every other network regardless of time
This measure puts Glenn against all of the prime time programming of all of the competing networks, even though his show does not air in prime time (it’s 2pm on the west coast remember).
There’s a measure in TV ratings called the HUT level (households using television). To boil it down, for every million households with a TV, about 400,000 are watching something during our time slot. During prime time that number is more like 640,000, in other words 60% more available households watching television. That makes it a lot harder to get an audience at 5pm than in prime time.
Regardless, Glenn Beck on Fox News still trounced everybody.
FOXN Beck 462
CNN Cooper 318
CNN Morgan 302
MSNBC Maddow 295
Despite the fact that 5pm has far fewer available people to watch TV, Glenn still beat every single show on every competing network by a minimum of 45%.
6—Beck vs Everyone else on Fox News regardless of time
This matches Glenn up against the entire lineup of Fox News Channel, regardless of time. Again, even though there are larger available audiences in prime time, Glenn performed very well. Throughout our run at FNC, and possibly since the beginning of time, Bill O’Reilly basically slaughtered everyone in the ratings. After that, Glenn, Brett Baier, Shep, Hannity and Greta bounced back-and-forth between 2nd and 6th. That quarter Glenn finished 4th.
7–Glenn Beck vs Glenn Beck
When you have a show this successful, the only way to argue its failure is to compare it to itself. So, the media took the peak of our ratings, usually January of 2010, and compared it against everything else. In April 2010, our ratings were supposedly collapsing as compared to January 2010. In November 2010, they were supposedly collapsing as compared to January 2010. Then, they were supposedly collapsing in January 2011 as compared to January 2010.
Then, the quarter including January 2011 supposedly collapsed as compared to the quarter including January 2010.
Yup, the first quarter of 2010 was a great quarter in the ratings. Health care was at its fever pitch, and Scott Brown was on the scene to (almost) save the day. That’s why
January of 2011 was a down month for basically every single cable news show in comparison (there might be an exception or two among shows that no one watches.) We also aired our highest rated episode of our entire time on television during January 2010.
So, left-leaning blogs and media reported that our ratings had dropped by 46%. But, knowing the how the news cycle works (they don’t schedule news events annually so that news channels can fairly compare ratings) does that number actually mean anything?
The first question you must ask to find out, which a few did, was how did other shows on Fox News do? Well, every one of them was down. Bret Baier and Shep Smith dropped by percentages in the mid-20’s, O’Reilly dropped by 30%, Hannity 38%, and Greta 47%. Does that mean these shows suddenly started sucking? No. It was all about the news cycle.
But—wait—doesn’t this show that Glenn dropped as much or more than everyone else? To know if that’s significant or not you have to ask—
what did he drop from? You see—Glenn dropped more than other shows, because he had GAINED more than other shows during the previous year. Here’s a graph to show what I’m talking about. These are the ratings changes on primetime shows on Fox not including Glenn in Jan 2009-11.
the 5pm hour spiked much, much higher than other shows between 2009-10—and despite the following years fall, still increased ratings by 60% in the two year period, despite most Fox shows being around flat. Despite the nonsense that his political opponents and haters attempt to spew, Glenn Beck on Fox News is one of the biggest ratings successes in the history of the format. This follows another triple digit percentage ratings increase on our previous show on Headline News. Next up-GBTV.
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