Contrary to popular misconception, bloggers aren’t eating into the market share of big media.
We’re filling a vacuum.
(Now, what was it you were saying again, Tony?)
Related bloodletting in Canada;
… To sweeten the deal, CityTV cancelled its evening newscasts in Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver and fired 281 people.
What’s interesting, is that the decline in News viewership includes FOX, which lost 20% News viewership in six months. It looks like all News programing is taking a hit.
Apt title.
I might say, Good Night, and Go F*%$ Yourself, you traitorous pieces of dirt.
There’s probably a hundred reasons why evening news viewership is down, blogging is just 1 of them. Here’s jus a few of the others.
Information overload
Internet
Satellite radio
Electronic devices such as phones and blackberries
On demand information
Baby boomers dying off
1,000s of new radio and TV stations
Those in the know have seen it coming for years and shifted their strategies accordingly.
To think it’s because of blogging and liberal control of the media are over simplifying.
TV? Hmm might have to look in a history book to see what you are talking about.
God Bless the blogs,
mr brown is correct.
rarely are things so long term and vast as television evening news reporting change for just a single reason.
oftentimes we need wait some number of years to finally root out the grand sum of all the societal/economic/legal/technical/etc reasons before drawing well supported and sufficing explanations.
bloggers give way too much credit to their timely appearance on the scene.
I still say george dubya is the single worst president in the past century. a mimicing parrot. a hand puppet in a suit. he simply doesnt have the intellect to drum up this stuff on his own or even comprehend the linkages and consequences.
debris trail – but Fox News still outperforms the others by a wide statistical margin.
david brown – what does ‘baby boomers dying off’ have to do with watching the news? Are you saying that only people in their 60’s watch the news?
The key reason, in my view, is that the television news – and newspapers, which are also in rapid fall – are superficial, one-way, non-interactive, authoritarian, non-factual, focused on opinions rather than facts…..
If you go to the internet, you can get opinions and alternate opinions. You can view multiple perspectives. And above all, you can also get facts. Facts are not available in the MSM.
“mr brown is correct.”
I think one can safely characterize what follows as “damned by faint praise”.
When I heard this morning that there would no longer be CITY-TV 6 o’clock news my first thoughts were of the talking head reporting that natural gas prices last winter were high “due to the war on terror”. Good riddance, television news is a pathetic waste of electricity, “News for Dummies”. I’m not surprised to hear intelligent people are no longer wasting their time watching morons and liars spout “news”.
While I tend to agree that there are probably many reasons why news viewership is down, the fact that newer technology such as the internet and satellite radio are as much the reason as any. Television technology knocked traditional radio audiences down when it was introduced. Cable TV cut down the viewers of the big three on-air broadcasters. Technology evolves, embrace it, adapt to it or get the heck out of the way.
I doubt it if us old farts of the baby boomer generation dying off has anything to do with it. In fact polls here have shown that a fair number of us bloggers and commentors are “seasoned citizens”.
BTW, Robert J. letters, just what does President Bush have to do with this discussion???
Robert,
I couldn’t agree more about the mimicing hand puppet comparison. He’s really gone downhill of late. The smug smirk has been replaced by a pained expression.
Texas,
It would be interesting to know what percentage of the ‘seasoned senior’ demographic blog.
It was never NEWS anyway, just INFOTAINMENT.
Interesting to see that the CRTC is expected to take 9 months (chuckle) to “study” the deal. Talk about mision creep: wasn’t their initial mandate a very modest one, viz., doling out frequency bands, period.
And can anything be more laughable than a government’s concern about “concentration”. In a free market concentration is NEVER EVER a problem. Competition makes sure of that, i.e., look at what happened to telephone service after de-regulation. All dangerous monopolies (those that can charge monopoloy prices) are in fact created by government intervention.
Is there a greater oxymoron in the known universe than a “government competition bureau”?
Kate,
You just can’t admit that us ‘jackass trolls’ can be correct about some things.
Damned by faint praise indeed!
Add my name to the “Don’t miss the National list”. It went off air in the Okanagan, along with Rick Mercer (thank God), Hockey Night in Canada, et.al. (now only available by cable). I watch CHBC at 11pm for local news, weather and sports.
Here here , Me No
Bell Globe Media could not hold it’s phone monoply together in this country so they are embarking on monopolizing our media.
F%*# the Mop and Pail and CTV and their liberal ass kissers parading as news reporters.
Robert capitals reserved for hisownself, your Bush Derangement Torrets is acting up.
Evening news??
Notwithstanding lost dogs and cats, nothing happens in any Canadian city that can fill a full hour newscast. You have to inject those little things called ‘Insight or the ‘The Problem Solver’ or whatever, and then cap the thing off with sports where you get to listen to some jock say the same thing that generations of jocks have been saying for their millions. If you did not get last nites score, you will never know unless you find out around the coffee pot at work the next day. The ‘sportscasters’ are already focussed on tonites game.
And then the weather… Every station appears to have subscribed to Google Earth and to Corel draw (or some such) for those dorky little symbols with the rain and the sun, etc. We do not find out why it is going to rain, hail, snow or whatever, just that it might. A thirty percent chance of sun, given by some sap that is 100% boring AND stupid AND/OR vastly out of their element.
Local news? I don’t think so. Canadian news? From where? CBC/Pravda? CTV/Almost Pravda?
Not too likely.
??
crb
ET: I believe that David is referring in loose language to shifting demographics, which I think we would all agree has an impact. I myself would suggest that attributing to the blogosphere a substantial shift away from the Evening News is rather delusional.
They have been losing rating for years ever since we had RONALD REAGAN and remember how they used to pound him without mercy? and they have paid the price the misrble bunch of vultures
Re: Bell/CHUM
As someone who worked in tv for 10 years and has directed newscasts I find the job cuts to be a bit of corporate thuggery.
CHUM wasn’t losing money. Bell has said they’ll sell the tv stations. It seems designed to cripple any buyer from competing in news.
“Hey everyone, we’ve got these tv stations for sale. We want a nice price. Just ignore how we’ve gutted the news operations.”
Wonder if the decline in news viewership matches the decline in Liberal support.
Irwin…”Wonder if the decline in news viewership matches the decline in Liberal support.”
Now that’s an interesting question!
BTW…BGM is acting out a Darwinian scenario in the world of commerce…they will continue to eat everything in sight until they get sick and die.
One can only hope that this will not serve as fuel for libcomsimps arguing for more CBC funding. In the real world CBC would be dead as last years turkeys.
I’m not so sure that all those eyeballs are going to blogs. I rarely watch a full news broadcast on TV but most of my news does come from news websites. ie. CBC, CTV, CNN, NYTIMES, LATIMES, etc. I do check out some blogs but not as often as mainstream media websites. Just curious if anyone has any stats on these types of sites?
Seeing as the internet wasn’t widely available (dial up) until late 94 early 95, I doubt that blogging had anything to do with the early decline.
Having said that – I do believe alternatives to MSM (and MSM themselves) will ensure that they will continue on their downward slide.
I really can’t think of anything that MSM can provide that can’t be provided better elsewhere (except for maybe a giggling head). The online world is doing a good job of being that “elsewhere”.
texas c:
george dubya is after all in the news a great deal.
dont take much for me to find an excuse to take yet another swipe at that white house occupant.
jeezuz. I bet there are white house pets that have exhibited more reasoning power and common sense than that twit.
re: ‘seasoned citizens’.
Im 54.
Ive been watching the geopolitical ‘landscape’ sustain ‘earthquakes’ ‘tsunamis’ etc for some 40 years.
george dubya is the single WORST president ever in my lifetime, and going back to FDR in the times I studied. before that I wasnt much interested, I dont know much about herbert hoover and his generation in the white house. at least THEY didnt have the potential of causing untold damage and alienation all over the globe.
robert j, et al, and their psychobabble rants are very good reasons why mainstream academia is largely impotent. self important asses.
I agree with David Brown (see David, we’re not all as closed minded as you think) that there are many reasons why network news is losing viewers.
Going back to Marshall Macluhan (and where was he on the list of “Greatest Canadians”?! – UPDATE – he came in at 62, behind Mike Myers and Pamela Anderson), he noted that one element of the CRT generation was a desire for increased “tactility”. Blogs, internet news, blackberries, email – all of those are intensely more involving than the passive reception of a talking head. In a world where people felt alienated, disenfranchised, and ignored, all these technologies gave them back some sense of – not power, but that their voices would be heard.
Letters to the editor just don’t cut it anymore. We’re used to faster response, give and take, and dialogue, not monologue. Network news has stayed with the old paradigms, and they’re paying the price.
I guess Robert J. must have been dead during the Carter years. And the Clinton years.
Otherwise he’d be 66 then.
Or is it 54 including the dead years? And then he’s actually 42???
Think living through all this with al~gore in charge, would have been much worse IMHO.
Same for us though, imagine the liberals stance on this?
Well, we’ll wait to see what the UN has to say about this, I will say…oh what? Send in peacekeepers on this? Oh no we not an invading kind of country…you know, not like those evil Americans, we’re nicer. I will say, we sent Iran a strongly worded letter too! 🙂
CUT TO EVENING NEWS PERSONALITIES SHOW:
“As canadians we can’t tolerate any violence by a bigger and better army even if their civilians are attacked first, it’s just not fair! …and any time a poor child suffers we care damit!
/cbc ctv.ca
Yeah, I use to watch regularly, not anymore, now only to torture myself, half to get fresh material too. Like this past week or so with the Israeli/Palestine issues I tuned in twice ctv.ca evening national, ( once with Lisa and once with Lloyd ) they’ve showed the Israeli flag flown backwards and with deep red instead of blue while the Palestine flag is shown properly, during their usual pro-pali views.
Nice eh?
… Carter years. And the Clinton years.
It’s really a toss up who was worse.
Bush is a brave wise decisive American president, in the Regan mould, history will be kind to him. Goofs can blither all they want, this is the internet after all – “vanity press for the deranged” – get back to us in ten years and tell us what you think.
“*The journalists who put together the nightly news programs could care less if the broadcasts are profitable. It’s obvious that their agenda is more important.”
“*Because of all of the above, the ever-shrinking audience for these broadcasts will be spoon-fed biased reporting, Bush bashing, and conservative-bashing for the foreseeable future. ”
I suspect these two reasons are largely responsible for the drop, more so than a prediction. Considering that Bush’s approval rating is up, and the economy is doing well, with deficit reduction well ahead of schedule; maybe people are sick of gloom and doom reporting from broadcasters and journalists with an agenda. Maybe too, that’s why a show like “America’s Got Talent,” NBC, got 12.03 million in the same week of ratings as the top 3. A good change of scenery from the ‘big 3’ bickering.
How refreshing is it here in Canada, to not have to listen to Harper bashing on a daily basis and threats of an election just as frequently? I for one am sick of gloom and doom from Liberals and MSM.
With an aging population, maybe the 11 pm timing of most news programs is too late? Not calling myself aging but I got to bed a lot earlier when news was @ 10. That’s why I appreciate Global National, including their new wknd. slots.
It’s too bad there is such a bias and monopoly in our media ownership. CRTC is a joke and should be reduced to rubble along with CBC. Sure funny that in a country so full of Liberals, we have these two agencies telling us what we can or can’t see ( Al Jazeera but not Fox?).
If the CHUM employees are smart and truly care about filling the void, they should start up their own internet news service, with live reports, unsensored blogging etc.
According, Kevin, to Regent University, at tinyurl.com/nwzoo …
“McLuhan believe that the print revolution begun by Gutenberg was the forerunner of the industrial revolution. One unforeseen consequence of print was the fragmentation of society. McLuhan argued that readers would now read in private, and so be alienated from others. “Printing, a ditto device, confirmed and extended the new visual stress. It created the portable book, which men could read in privacy and in isolation from others.”
“Interestingly, McLuhan saw electronic media as a return to collective ways of perceiving the world. His “global village” theory posited the ability of electronic media to unify and retribalize the human race. What McLuhan did not live to see, but perhaps foresaw, was the merging of text and electronic mass media in this new media called the Internet.”
I think it remains an open question as to whether or not the web, and web logs in particular, will decrease or increase tribalism. I’d like to hear ET’s take on the semiotics involved.
Vitruvius:
Macluhan was well aware of the tribalistic nature of electronic media. In “Understanding Media” – my pick for the most important book of the 20th century – he noted (and I paraphrase from memory) “at some point, we might be able to say ‘so much less radio and TV for society XXX’ in order to reduce tribal activity”.
Further, Macluhan, as a product of literary man, was a wholehearted supporter of it. He decried the inability of what he called electronic man to look ahead. (It’s important to remember that ‘Understanding Media’ was written in 1964, well before satellite TV, cable, internet, etc.)
He often invoked the metaphor of King Canute, saying that, as much as Canute wanted to hold back the waves, he was ineffectual, just as the intelligentsia of the 60’s were unable to hold back the differing perceptions of the TV age.
Of course, Macluhan’s real message was new technologies remake societies, and indeed man. For all I know, V, you live in Burma; we are connected through the web without any meaningful distinction in time or place. The relationship I have with you (and david brown, texas canuck, kate, and &c) simply wasn’t possible 20 years ago.
Most people are unaware of Macluhan’s “tetrad”, a series of four questions. ‘What does the new technology extend?’, ‘What does it make obsolete?’, ‘What does it retrieve?’, and ‘What does the tech reverse into if over-extended?’.
I think it’s obvious that blogs extend the news media, and obsolete the national news.
The interesting questions are “what does it retrieve?” and “what does it reverse into?”.
It’s way too late for me to expound on these ideas, but if anyone’s interested, I’ll try on the weekend.
There are many reasons for the drop in news viewers.
Purely locally, Channel 10 dropped its farm news, which moved some viewers to Channel 13 and some to the internet. Thus, a net loss in viewers.
From my point of view, I do not like the misandry, the contempt for all males which is so much a part of modern newscasting. Thus, I watch the first few minutes to see whose house burned down / car crashed and that’s all.
There are many many factors such as these. All add up to create the drop in viewers.
Carter, Clinton, Henry Ford and Mohammad are the reasons for where we’re at now.
Bush?
He may not be all that bright, certainly not bright enough to be the mastermind feeding all the conspiracy wacks. But, I’d have to think he believes he’s doing the right thing. Look at the cost to him personally. He’s the most hated man in the world. Don’t think all the oil money in the ME is worth that.