Sunday, January 06, 2008

Rupert Murdoch's Two Percent Solution

What,NoSub-PrimeWillieHorton?
AilesVille



Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation launched the 'Fox Business Channel' this fall behind a cranked-up, multi-level stratification promotional blitzkrieg that hasn't been seen since, well, since 'Shock-And-Awe'.

So, backed by all that hype, how many viewers do you think Rupert and his Miracles garnered during the network's first nine weeks on the air?

A few million......?

Nope.

A few hundred thousand.....?

Nope.

Fifty thousand......?

Nope.

The real number is actually a reported 6,300, on average, on any given weekday.

Which is precisely 2.2% of CNBC's 283,000 average.

Or, put another way, it is less than some of the more popular local cable access channels in a number of major metropolitan U.S. television markets.

In fact, it is a number so low that A.C. Nielsen, the company that tracks such things, will not even officially confirm it:

While Nielsen, at the network’s request, has measured the viewership of Fox Business since its premiere, Nielsen is not permitted to release or even confirm those figures publicly. That is because they are so low as to fall below Nielsen’s minimum standards for reporting, said Gary Holmes, a Nielsen spokesman.

In other words, the number is so low that Nielsen, based on it's sampling methods, is not actually sure it is real.

Thus, the number could, statistically speaking, quite possibly even be zero.

Guess folks that care about making money are more discerning about where they get their 'fair and balanced' news than are those folks who care about making war*.


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*Not that the two groups are necessarily mutually exclusive, of course.

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