If you torture your research data long enough, it will eventually tell you what you want to hear. Will somebody please share that insight with the broadcast and cable news organizations who are now engaged in a national debate over who’s got the biggest one? Viewing audience, that is.
CBS News issued a press release ballyhooing its viewership versus that of cable news organizations. The Los Angles Times actually used the story, reporting that the broadcast network is “trying to counter the overwhelming amount of media attention that goes to cable news networks…to assert that broadcast network news retains ‘overwhelming dominance’ among viewers.”
CBS reaches 34.7 million unique viewers per night and about 74.9 million unique viewers per week, which is more than the cable guys — CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CNN Headline News and CNBC — combined, reach in a day or even a week with their entire 24-hour schedules, CBS said, citing Nielsen Media Research figures.
Apparently, CNN started the lockerroomesque comparison with claims to advertisers that “cable has for the first time surpassed broadcasters by… the total time spent viewing news,” the Times reported. CNN claims the five cable networks grabbed 57.5% of news viewing during the second quarter of this year, compared to 48.6% that the broadcasters attracted. CNN, however, doesn’t count prime time news magazine shows such as NBC’s “Dateline,” which accounts for the difference in the numbers.
Big-time advertising dollars are at stake, of course, but there probably wouldn’t now be any competitive dropping of executive pin-stripped trou if CBS “had been successful in talks held during the last couple of years with CNN about a possible collaboration, says the Times article. Predictably, the other combatants lined up according to their broadcast/cable relationships. ABC News applauded CBS for putting “the news competition into its proper perspective.” NBC News President Neal Shapiro, whose network owns cable’s CNBC and co-owns MSNBC, issued a statement that essentially said “Can’t everybody just get along?” And Fox News had no comment.
