The Media Research Center is hardly balanced, but I do like it when they pick up on a hilarious tidbit, especially when the subject is actually serious about it. In this case it's sliding-into-genuine-tinfoil-hatness Keith Olbermann of MSNBC's "Countdown" who pointed out the following (emphasis mine):
"Not so fast, Sidney Greenstreet. Check out last night's ratings: At midnight Eastern, 9pm Pacific, Countdown in first place in the only ratings the industry cares about: Viewers 25 to 54. Beat Fox News and Brit Hume by 16,000, beat Larry King by 52,000 -- [mimics King] 'Houston, goodbye' -- beat Glenn Beck by 181,000.
Whoa! Unbelievable!! Olbermann wins that so-incredibly valuable MIDNIGHT time slot!! ROTFLMAO!! (And I almost did when I read this!)
Actually, it's the repeat of "Countdown" that wins that time slot, beating repeats of those competing programs. In the original broadcast time slot ratings battle -- at 8 p.m. -- "Countdown" finishes dead last to its cable rivals. Fox's Bill O'Reilly continues to dominate -- by a prodigious margin -- that most valuable of time periods, although if it's any consolation to poor Keith, the ratings for CNN and MSNBC have been gaining over the past year while Fox's have dropped off a bit. But that's like bowling games of about 280+ for a long time while your competitors are notching around 120 or so. They can only improve while you maintaining such a maximum level of performance can only help but drop off a little.
And what else can the last place cable news network do when facing its predicament? Constantly trash the competition. Olbermann does it so much that if I was a loyal devotee of his show I'd be writing in saying "Stop it, already!" And now, even supposed conservative Tucker Carlson is getting in on the act, denigrating fellow conservatives (from other networks) on his show fairly regularly. Occasionally -- fine. Often? Lame. If my fave [pundit] shows (Scarborough, O'Reilly, Matthews) were doing that as much as Keith and Tucker, I'd be tuning them out, too.
More here and here. IowaHawk has a possible Olbermann "special rant" to explain all this.
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