Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Recent headlines exclaiming “Cable News Ratings Soar,” about how there were 72.5 billion minutes of news consumption in 2016, made me cringe.  Any time you start talking about billions of minutes viewed, it’s a not-too-transparent attempt to hide the fact that average ratings are small.  

This is relevant in light of Bill O’Reilly being fired from Fox News under a cloud of sexual harassment allegations.  “The O’Reilly Factor” has been positioned in the press as a ratings powerhouse.  If cable news ratings were soaring, Bill O’Reilly was leading the charge.  The reality, however, is somewhat different from the headlines.

There is no question that O’Reilly has been key to Fox News’s prime-time success, helping the network rise head and shoulders above the other cable news networks.  But there is a reason why you seldom hear anything about his actual ratings.  They’re decent, but by no means great.  O’Reilly’s live adult 18-49 rating in the Q4 (election season) was only 0.26.  Among the key news demo of adults 25-54, it was just 0.40 – less than half a rating point....  

When the organizer of the #NotMyPresident protests refused to appear on Tucker Carlson’s show, the Fox News host booked an actor with no ties to its leadership as a replacement.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson had a hard time booking Olga Lexell, the creator and co-organizer of the nationwide Not My President’s Day protests on Monday.

So, after repeated refusals, Carlson’s show instead booked Shane Saunders, a Los Angeles-based actor and casting agent, who Lexell said “was not affiliated in any way with our rallies and was not an organizer.”

In the five-minute segment, Saunders was referred to as an “organizer” by an on-screen graphic and Carlson himself, who also asked Saunders about why “your protest is going to make a difference.”

“It's frustrating because, with the exception of one person, all of the organizers are women,” Lexell told The Daily Beast. “For a man who knows nothing about the protests to go on TV unprepared, misrepresent our message, take credit for our weeks of hard work, and make us look bad—and for Tucker Carlson's team to go along with it—is just disappointing.”...