Monday, December 04, 2006
Beck and Grace: Increasing Ratings and Lowering CNN's Standards?
The New York Times has an article today about how Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck have increased the ratings for HLN while at the same time lowering its standards. Below is a portion of the article:
"So far, the experiment is a success. Since his arrival in May, Mr. Beck has increased the ratings in his 7 p.m. time period 60 percent among all viewers, and 84 percent among viewers aged 25 to 54. Ms. Grace has largely retained the triple-digit percentage increases in her time period from the year before.
While the daytime ratings at Headline News have grown a modest 10 percent in that prime demographic since 2004, Headline Prime’s ratings are up 48 percent, although Headline Prime still trails CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, by far the leader.
But with the improved ratings come a question: how can the CNN networks, which are owned by Time Warner, compete with the more opinionated prime-time competition — Fox News and MSNBC, in particular — while preserving their reputation as objective news gatherers?
Mr. Jautz spoke enthusiastically of the “passion and point of view” now present at the network. and compared its role to an op-ed page of a daily newspaper, with CNN representing the objective news pages. Mr. Beck sees the separation between news and opinion at the network as absolute."
"So far, the experiment is a success. Since his arrival in May, Mr. Beck has increased the ratings in his 7 p.m. time period 60 percent among all viewers, and 84 percent among viewers aged 25 to 54. Ms. Grace has largely retained the triple-digit percentage increases in her time period from the year before.
While the daytime ratings at Headline News have grown a modest 10 percent in that prime demographic since 2004, Headline Prime’s ratings are up 48 percent, although Headline Prime still trails CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, by far the leader.
But with the improved ratings come a question: how can the CNN networks, which are owned by Time Warner, compete with the more opinionated prime-time competition — Fox News and MSNBC, in particular — while preserving their reputation as objective news gatherers?
Mr. Jautz spoke enthusiastically of the “passion and point of view” now present at the network. and compared its role to an op-ed page of a daily newspaper, with CNN representing the objective news pages. Mr. Beck sees the separation between news and opinion at the network as absolute."
# posted by ATN @ 8:47 AM 
