Fox News: Even Older Than Network News

[FredLeonard]

There was a time when evening newscasts carried the name of the sponsor (i.e., "The Texaco Huntley-Brinkley Report," "The Camel News Caravan"). If that practice continued, they might call them The Metamucil Evening News.

Guess what! The parents of people who watch terrestrial network news are watching Fox News.

Fox News continues to be near the top in cable television in terms of the number of viewers it attracts, but it is near the top in another category, too: the median age of its audience is among the oldest in television.

For most of the television business — the segment that relies on advertising — that would be serious cause for concern because ad sales are almost always based on a target age of 25 to 54, and Fox News, for the last two years, has had a median age of 65-plus in its ratings both for the full day and for prime time. ...
READ MORE
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/business/its-viewers-are-graying-but-their-passion-pays-for-fox-news.htm

Other tidbits:

• Watch it or not, you pay 94 cents a month for FNC, one of the highest subscription fees around.
• FNC gets $1.1 Billion just from subscriber fees.
• FNC's money demo audience is down by almost a third over the last five years.
• Nielsen only reports age stats as "over 65," so they don't tell us how old old is for FNC.

We know right-wing talk radio is dying. Right-wing talk TV is, too. Or at least the audience for both is pre-death.

 

[Morgan Wick]

Not too surprising, when you consider younger people tend to be more liberal than older people and overlay that on top of people who watch TV news being older to begin with... but Fox's median age is literally off the scale? Wow.

 

[KMRD]

"We know right-wing talk radio is dying. Right-wing talk TV is, too. Or at least the audience for both is pre-death."



Can you cite your source(s) that back up your opinion that "right-wing talk" is dying? I do recall a left-wing radio network known as air amerika that did, in fact, die several years ago. Perhaps that's what you are thinking of.

The ratings prove that FNC is the #1 cable news network and has been for years. Funny how those facts escape you when you make your wishful assertion that "right-wing talk TV" is (dead) too.

 

[landtuna]

Judging by the type of commercials these last five or more years on the network evening news (prescription drugs predominately) I don't think the demo age is all that much of a surprise.

 

[stevensonair]

This has been rehashed over and over on these boards. Air America was badly managed on marginal signals, with an often less than ideal lineup. They also stumbled by requiring full schedule coverage instead of allowing show-by-show carriage. However, Ed Schultz, Randi Rhodes, Stephanie Miller and others continue to be aired.

There have been many 2nd and 3rd conservative talkers that are either now off air or kept on as ideological projects despite poor ratings (look at any Salem talk station for reference.)

If you listen to the major conservative talk shows, Limbaugh included, you'll hear an increasing amount of debt relief/tax law, "buy gold" and ED cures. In some markets, there's less and less local and more PSAs.

The audience is aging rapidly. Attempts to move the format to FM absent a strong local news brand haven't dramatically lowered the average listener demo. Those demos are used to sell advertising. I'm sorry your ideology feels threatened, but these are business facts. Capitalism. And the future of political talk isn't looking bright many years out.

No one's saying it's "failed" or even currently "failing" - but there's some serious issues facing political talk that have no easy answers.

 

[therealjm12]

Air America failed because 1. bad management 2. bad signals 3. bad hosts. It was boring. Very, very, boring. For the record, the more interesting liberal talk hosts Stephanie Miller and Ed Schultz were never part of Air America.
A generic explanation of why conservative talk succeeds and liberal talk doesn't is because the liberal audience is younger and more educated than the conservative audience. The younger audience has no loyalty to the AM band. Many of them don't even know where or if AM is on their radio. I don't really think FM would work for Lib talk either. The intended audience just doesn't get their information from the radio AM or FM. Conservative talk will continue on major AM stations for the foreseeable future. There really isn't anything else to program.

 

[umfan]

FNC is, by far, the most profitable cable news channel. Perhaps this experience will break the assumption that a network cannot cater to an older demographic and be profitable.

This assumption that an aging audience equals certain irrelvancy is highly flawed. People's points of view evolve as they age. As FNC's audience dies there is a good possibility that they will be replaced by other people as they get older and change aspects of their opinions.

FNC has kept a stable lineup for years, with great success, but a downside to that is there isn't much to attract a new audience. They've announced a shakeup of sorts with Megyn Kelly moving into primetime at some point.

When your audience is greater than your next two competitors, combined, and you're drawing more aggregate viewers from the money demos even if your median age is higher, this doesn't really rise to the level of a legitimate concern.

 

[Morgan Wick]

FNC is, by far, the most profitable cable news channel. Perhaps this experience will break the assumption that a network cannot cater to an older demographic and be profitable.

Being the most profitable cable news channel, and citing that to claim that channels aimed at old people can be profitable, is like winning a race for people 65 and older and citing that to claim that old people aren't slow. Fox is profitable because conservatives tend to be closed-minded and/or see the rest of the media as unconscionably liberal, and refuse to trust any source other than Fox, which is why they can charge so much. It's the same thing as with ESPN, except if you drop Fox you're accused of censoring dissenting viewpoints to further the liberal agenda.

This assumption that an aging audience equals certain irrelvancy is highly flawed. People's points of view evolve as they age. As FNC's audience dies there is a good possibility that they will be replaced by other people as they get older and change aspects of their opinions.

After the 2012 elections, there was a lot of hand-wringing over whether the GOP could ever win another national election for at least a generation, since they had pissed off so many potential voters, most notably Latinos. So it's not just "the people who vote GOP today are dying off"; it's also the party being turned so radical as the older baby boomers cling to relevance they may be permanently alienating everyone else. Couple that with other societal shifts (remember Nate Silver's remark about winning the cities to win the election?) and the right could be in big trouble.

 

[FredLeonard]

Not paying attention: FNC is profitable thanks to subscriber fees. Not ad sales. Where does your cable/fiber/satellite monthly payment go? Most of it goes to cable channel operators. They charge cable companies for the right to carry the channel. You pay whether you watch or not. ESPN gets more than anybody: Almost five bucks a month, last time I looked. FNC, on average, gets just under a buck a month but it adds up when you figure they collect from a subscribers - of any age - not just viewers.

Rupert Murdoch also ties FNC in with his other cable properties, so cable/fiber/satellite companies have little choice but to pay (more accurately make you pay). This includes Fox Sports (which operates regional sports channels in many markets), Fox Network and other channels.

But look at the spots on FNC or any channel and you get a pretty good idea of who is watching (and even an inkling of how big the audience is).

 

[sdwulfdawg]

FredLeonard, please show some deference to our intelligence by citing specific sources of what you are spewing....

It is ironic that you are always criticizing TV news, but you are not exactly "journalistic" when it comes to your citing "facts."

 

[nomadcowatbk]

"We know right-wing talk radio is dying. Right-wing talk TV is, too. Or at least the audience for both is pre-death."



Can you cite your source(s) that back up your opinion that "right-wing talk" is dying? I do recall a left-wing radio network known as air amerika that did, in fact, die several years ago. Perhaps that's what you are thinking of.

The ratings prove that FNC is the #1 cable news network and has been for years. Funny how those facts escape you when you make your wishful assertion that "right-wing talk TV" is (dead) too.

Who will the replace the current Fox news viewers after the current ones die?

 

[nomadcowatbk]

Fox News doesn't have to worry about it's viewers cord cutting since they're generally older and less tech savy.

 

[umfan]

Fred was discussing the NY Times piece.

Whether the revenue comes from the subscriber fees or the advertising, in this case it comes from both, albeit the fees are the bigger of the two, the fact is that FNC commands the premium.

If you have half the viewers yet a higher percentage are in the money demo, but the larger viewer base is still getting more eyeballs in the money demo, whose going to get the ad dollars and command the subscription premium? The station with the greater number of eyeballs on it.

If CNN was taken off my system, I wouldn't care. If FNC was, I'd be calling the cable company.

 

[FredLeonard]

If CNN was taken off my system, I wouldn't care. If FNC was, I'd be calling the cable company.

Good luck with that. It's been a while but when somebody started a new cable channel, they'd run promos for it on existing channels always ending with "call your cable operator." They don't do that much any more. It's hard enough to reach a real person at a cable company when your system goes down and even harder to resolve a billing problem. I've never seen a voice menu option for complaints or comments about channel line-ups (add this or bring that back). The best you can do is reach their call center in India or someplace and the person will follow the let-them-rant script with you. I doubt they make any kind of record of what the customer asks for. I am certain they don't care and pay zero attention.

Notice that the Times article said CNN and MSNBC both skew younger - not a lot younger, not money demos younger but younger. And when stuff happens, a lot of people go to CNN for actual news.

Here's to the day Rupert Murdoch goes to jail.

 

[nomadcowatbk]

What kind of subscriber fees do Hallmark Channel or TV Land get (also older skewing channels)? Are there any other disproportionately older skewing channels besides Fox News? Is there room for another right wing news channel to compete with Fox News or does the RW want keep a centralized channel for propaganda?

 

[w9wi]

I'm not entirely sure how much it matters but...

I'm thinking Hallmark Channel and TV Land are a LOT cheaper to operate than Fox News. Doing anything live - especially if it involves lots of live shots & commentators - isn't going to be inexpensive.

Point being, Hallmark doesn't need to bring in nearly as much revenue to be profitable.

 

[FredLeonard]

What kind of subscriber fees do Hallmark Channel or TV Land get (also older skewing channels)? Are there any other disproportionately older skewing channels besides Fox News? Is there room for another right wing news channel to compete with Fox News or does the RW want keep a centralized channel for propaganda?

In 2010, TV Land got $.11 per subscriber and Hallmark got $.06. In 2010, Fox News got $.58. In 2012, FNC got $.82 and the Times says current figure is $.94.

Here's the top 20 in 2012:

1. ESPN ($5.06)
2. ESPN 3D ($2.71)
3. 3net ($1.29)
4. TNT ($1.21)
5. Disney Channel ($0.97)
6. NFL Network ($0.84)
7. Fox News ($0.82)
8. ESPN2 ($0.67)
9. USA Network ($0.62)
10. TBS ($0.59)
11(t). MGM HD ($0.58)
11(t). CNN en Espanol ($0.58)
13. CNN/HLN ($0.57)
14. Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite ($0.52)
15. HDNet ($0.47)
16. FX ($0.46)
17(t). Fox College Sports ($0.39)
17(t). MTV ($0.39)
19. HDNet Movies ($0.38)
20(t). Big Ten Network ($0.37)
20(t). Discovery Channel ($0.37)

 

[umfan]

I wonder if Fox Business Channel is included with FNC? I presume a cable operator gets HNN for free if they take CNN?

 

[LKellerIII]

I'm older (61), but like young consumers in at least one respect - I get most of my news these days off the internet (my cell phone, my computer at work, my i-Pad, etc.). I usually only watch cable news for live breaking stories, and I give CNN my business. Perhaps I would watch cable news a bit at home if I was retired, but that's not happening anytime soon (kid in college).

It seems to me that all cable news - with either a liberal or conservative lean - faces an uphill battle for audience in coming years.

And to those who often quote the missive that younger people are less conservative - be careful and reserve judgment. While succeding generations do tend to get more liberal in terms of social issues (i.e.: gay marriage), I'd caution that my generation (baby-boomers) including the hippies, counter-culture types, and demonstrators of the 60s and 70s. It was assumed by many pundits back then that we would be more liberal than our parents. It turned out not to be true.

 

[liradioisbad]

What kind of subscriber fees do Hallmark Channel or TV Land get (also older skewing channels)? Are there any other disproportionately older skewing channels besides Fox News? Is there room for another right wing news channel to compete with Fox News or does the RW want keep a centralized channel for propaganda?

To emphasize the post above me, CNN's average viewer is 63. For that matter, MSNBC's is 59.

There was another right-leaning news channel that just started operations this month, but barely anyone carries it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_America_News_Network