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....  

Better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I'm telling you why: Santa Claus is coming to town, and this year he's handing out 2015 ratings victories to seemingly everyone.

Several networks are closing out 2015 by declaring calendar year ratings wins, some in the traditional demographics, others in more creative categories. It's the TV version of "everyone gets a trophy." Here's a rundown of which networks seem to be on top in certain demos this year, according to Nielsen...

...Television is undergoing an analogous transformation. Although we sometimes watch with family or friends, we mostly experience TV in relative social isolation. We are disconnected from most of the people watching with us, deaf to the roar of the crowd during a game or the laughter of the audience after a punch line. We have learned to suppress our urge to talk about what moves us, settling instead for chance meetings at the water cooler the day after.

But all that has changed with the sudden rise of realtime social media, particularly Twitter. Just in the United States, tens of millions of people are talking to each other as they watch TV. This year's Super Bowl alone spurred over 24 million tweets. After 80 years of sequestered viewing, television audiences worldwide have forged Twitter into a social soundtrack for TV. If you are not part of the soundtrack yet, chances are that you will be soon....