[Infowarrior] - Cable News: Who's shouting now?

[Richard Forno]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/ideas/bal-id.cable24dec24,0,694639.
story?coll=bal-ideas-headlines

Who's shouting now?

The opinionated Fox News Channel is giving ground to increasingly noisy
competitors

By Nick Madigan
Sun Staff

December 24, 2006

Ever since Fox News Channel, founded in 1996, proved that news delivered
with attitude, opinion and even belligerence could wipe the clock of just
about any competitor, CNN - once the undisputed leader of the cable news
pack - and a handful of smaller channels have been struggling to find a
formula that brings in the same kind of numbers.

Now, CNN and the others appear to have found an answer. Virtually all the
competitors are slashing at the Fox ratings lead by offering their own
versions of noisy and opinionated news. CNN has been closing on Fox and the
others, including MSNBC and CNBC, have on occasion closed on CNN. They're
all doing it by delivering the news with a strong personal flair.

The most salient examples of the trend are Headline News's Glenn Beck, who
is showing the fastest-rising ratings of anyone on cable news; Keith
Olbermann, MSNBC's pugnacious but cerebral resident lefty; his colleague
Chris Matthews, long an opponent of the Iraq war who was recently off the
air because of illness but who remains very much in the mix; Nancy Grace,
whose acerbic, finger-wagging style on Headline News is aimed primarily at
miscreants and their lawyers; and, on CNBC, the manic money maven Jim
Cramer, whose flailing arms and booming delivery is sheer entertainment for
stock-market players who don't mind being shouted at.

The shift toward all-opinion, all-the-time is also working on CNN for Lou
Dobbs, who never tires of pushing protectionist views that have won him fans
as well as critics. The somewhat stodgy Dobbs unabashedly labels his show
"news, debate and opinion."

The shakeout among the main cable news networks is all the more notable for
the audience losses at Fox News Channel, which has suffered a 21 percent
decline in total viewers when compared to the fourth quarter of 2005. Its
biggest star, Bill O'Reilly, virtually invincible for much of the Bush
administration's tenure, has also lost a significant number of viewers in
the past year as the administration's fortunes have waned, its Iraq policy
in shambles and its midterm electoral defeats conclusive.

Overall, though, O'Reilly remains the king of cable, ahead of CNN's Larry
King and the target of almost relentless invective from MSNBC's Olbermann,
who cheerfully describes O'Reilly as "the worst person in the world."

O'Reilly, quick to take offense from any challenge to his bedrock
conservative views, is equally dismissive of Olbermann. Watching the two go
after each other is a spectator sport.

A spokeswoman for Fox, Irena Briganti, refused to make available for comment
any of the network's executives or on-air personalities, writing in an
e-mail message that there was "no reason" for Fox to contribute to a story
that would include CNN and MSNBC.

She wrote also that both networks remain "in a death struggle for second
place" behind Fox.

"Fox is still No. 1 thanks to O'Reilly," said Brian Stelter, who covers the
industry on his TVNewser.com blog. "Without him, it would still be very
competitive between CNN and Fox. Maybe the upstarts are starting to act a
little more like Fox did, when Fox was David to CNN's Goliath. But now that
Fox is Goliath, MSNBC and Headline News are starting to throw stones - or
pebbles, at least."

Stelter was particularly impressed with the rise of Dobbs on CNN, "to the
point where he occasionally beats Brit Hume on Fox." On Dec. 11, Stelter
said, Dobbs even came in ahead of his CNN colleague Larry King, who normally
trounces everyone on cable news except O'Reilly.

"I'd be worried if I were Fox," said Stelter about the surge by Dobbs,
Olbermann, Beck and others whose numbers have been showing signs of
momentum.

For the past decade, since Fox News Channel began broadcasting, there was
always a ratings formula that seemed to describe the war between CNN, FNC
and their distant challengers.

"It was 1 Fox equals 2 CNN, and 1 CNN equals 2 MSNBC," Stelter said. "Now
it's not so simple any more. About half the time, MSNBC is beating CNN in
the demo."

By "the demo," Stelter means the 25-to-54 age demographic that advertisers
covet, and whose viewing habits are therefore the most studied.

Those are some of the same people who tend to watch Comedy Central's
fake-news king, Jon Stewart - along with his late-night cohort, Stephen
Colbert - and consider them the oracles of what's wrong and hypocritical in
both media and government.

Martin Kaplan, associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at
the University of Southern California, said MSNBC's recent rise in audience
numbers, largely because of Olbermann, is propelled by what he called "the
Jon Stewart audience."

Olbermann's show, Countdown, is "informative, edgy and funny, and it
respects its audience," said Kaplan, who found it remarkable that "Jon
Stewart and Stephen Colbert set a standard now."

Kaplan is distressed at the changes at Headline News, which, in the
evenings, has become the op-ed page to CNN's hard-news shows.

"They used to be like the best AM radio news stations, in that you could
turn them on at any time and get a fill of the headlines and hard news,"
Kaplan said of Headline News. "But now it's the same talking heads and
ideologues and bullies as all the rest."

Kaplan was no kinder to CNN, where he appreciates only the midday feed from
CNN International in London. "It's an hour of competently done international
news done by professionals," he said.

Kaplan may have been on the mark with his criticism of the gravitas-free CNN
anchor Tony Harris, who sometimes snickers his way through interviews.
Kaplan said the network's morning shows "suffer from the same happy-talk
disease that the broadcast networks have discovered is the key to ratings."

On the other hand, CNN's curmudgeonly Jack Cafferty is appealing because,
Kaplan said, "he's become the truth teller, the guy who says, 'How dumb do
they think we are?'

"It used to be more of a crank act," Kaplan said, referring to Cafferty.
"But you get the sense now that there's more depth, a greater stake in the
outcome. He's not just cynical. He's rooting for change."

On election night, CNN won the ratings race, concurrent with the Democratic
gains in Congress.

"Fox did not do well in the elections," said Diedtra Henderson, a reporter
in the Washington bureau of The Boston Globe and an avid election-watcher.
"CNN's numbers were huge. CNN even took out full-page ads in The New York
Times saying they were No. 1. Fox couldn't deal with the reality of the
news, and CNN benefited because it was seen as bipartisan. CNN called races
faster, while Fox anchors were arguing with guests."

Jonathan Klein, president of CNN's U.S. operations, said it was "clear that
Fox has lost the pulse of the country."

Klein, who ditched the amiable anchor Aaron Brown a year ago in favor of the
hustle-and-bustle Anderson Cooper, said Fox finds itself a victim of its
almost unwavering support for the Bush administration, no matter what the
reality in Iraq or elsewhere.

"The war is going badly and it's made people turn away from flag-waving,
sloganeering and spin and it's made the audience seek out answers," Klein
said. "They want insight. The audience is increasingly on to the fact that
Fox is giving people the administration party line."

Klein cited as an example FNC's use of the slogan "New Way Forward" to
identify Bush administration policy in Iraq. The slogan, Klein said, happens
to be the administration's own title for its policy.

Klein said there other kinks in Fox's armor. A year ago, he said, Greta Van
Susteren's On the Record had a 52 share in the ratings, against Aaron
Brown's anemic 17-share on CNN. Now, Van Susteren is down to a
still-appreciable 39 share while Brown's replacement, Anderson Cooper, is at
31, and catching up.

At MSNBC, Dan Abrams, who was appointed general manager six months ago, said
he was thrilled that the network has found its focus and has become
"regularly competitive" with CNN. "There's no question that in a competitive
landscape we are the story of cable news right now," said Abrams, a former
legal correspondent for NBC News. "We have shot up to a place where we are
competitive. There's no question that Keith Olbermann is on fire; he's
beating Paula Zahn on CNN in the key demo almost every night. From Imus to
dayside programming to Chris Matthews to Keith Olbermann to Joe Scarborough
- everything is on fire now. CNN has a lot to be worried about. CNN is in
real danger of becoming the news dinosaur."

Not necessarily. Although growing, MSNBC's numbers remain mostly in the
shadows of the larger channels.

Wolf Blitzer, whose daily Situation Room has come to define CNN's new,
high-tech approach to breaking news, would not be drawn into comparisons
with Fox, MSNBC or anyone else. "I welcome the competition," he said. "It
makes us all better. If I play tennis with someone whose game is better than
mine, I play better. Bring it on - the more the merrier.

"My attitude is, if I give our viewers serious, important hard news, they
will come. We've got a news environment now that's dominated by two subjects
- Iraq and politics, and they're related. And they're two subjects I know
well. They play to my strengths, and I think that's why viewers are watching
us."

The viewers of CNN, Blitzer said, are "news junkies" who "want some value"
and "don't want junk."

Beck, a longtime radio host who was brought into the Headline News fold only
in May, has seen his ratings increase since then by 84 percent among the
most-coveted viewers.

"Crazy, isn't it?" asked Beck. "It just goes to show you how low our
standards are. Who thought cable news would be fun?"

Then, turning serious, Beck said audiences "are hungry for news in a
different way."

"Wherever you get your news during the day - CNN.com or Drudge Report, say -
it's usually on the Internet," he said. "By the time you get home at night,
you're already up to speed. Now what you're looking for is, what does this
mean? You're not necessarily looking for outrageous opinion; you're looking
for perspective."

Beck, who had over a million viewers for a special on militant Islam in
November, said he was trying to avoid the "self-righteous, pompous shtick"
common to some of his competitors, as well as the tendency to "put people in
little boxes, yelling at each other."

"That's pretty much the cable news formula that makes you want to blow your
head off nightly."

Trying to explain his on-air appeal, the conservative Beck said it is "not a
left versus right thing," but rather "right versus wrong."

"It's the attitude that you don't take yourself too seriously," he went on.
"If you think I'm wrong, please stand in line. I'm serving number 46 right
now."

Referring to a new French all-news channel, Beck could not resist taking a
dig. "I hear," he said, "that they'll show the white flag 24 hours a day."

nick.madigan at baltsun.com