Bad war coverage, bad ratings
TV audiences down 42% from the Persian Gulf War
Western Lensman: “They’re attempting to turn their anchors into on-air podcasters. Things are getting desperate over at CNN.”
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The second-biggest loser in Operation Epic Fury is the American news media. The demolition of Iran’s military saw no major spike in TV news show ratings—in part because the attack began in the wee hours of a Saturday morning, but mainly it was due to the failure of TV news to retain its credibility as a reliable and impartial source of infortmation.
When the workweek began on March 2, TV evening news ratings rose slightly for the week. ABC’s World News Tonight averaged 8.901 million viewers a night, NBC Nightly News averaged 6.898 million, and CBS Evening News averaged 4.117 million.
The next week viewership dropped.
ABC averaged 8.478 million viewers a night, NBC averaged 6.514 million, and CBS averaged 3.845 million total viewers. CBS managed to have a smaller viewership than it did a year ago. The audiences for the other two were up slightly.
Bari Weiss is worth every penny they pay her—if she makes minimum wage.
Elon Musk, meanwhile, said X broke a record in engagements on the first day of Epic Fury, a record users broke the next day.
These audiences pale compared to the Persian Gulf War.
35 years ago, when the Persian Gulf War began, ABC alone drew 13 million viewers.
In all, the big three networks drew more than 32 million viewers with CNN adding another 10.8 million viewers.
43 million viewers then.
25.429 million now in the opening week.
That is a 42% drop in their audiences.
When you consider the USA’s population is 38% larger today that shows just how far television news has fallen. It took a long time for ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC to establish themselves as reliable sources for objective information. All that collapsed with the deification of Obama and the demonization of Trump.
It is not as if people are uninterested in the war. A March 16 Economist/YouGov poll showed 41% say they are seeking out the news more than usual. They just didn’t go to TV news for their information.
On his show on Friday, Bill Maher said, “During most primetime nights, less than 1% of the country is watching Fox News, CNN, and MS NOW, combined. A guy on TikTok pressure washing his driveway gets bigger ratings.
“76% of Americans watch less than 1 hour of any cable news in a month.”
People want the news but the cable news channels don’t deliver news. They deliver panels.
Usually the panel is a black guy, a white guy and three ladies. The five of them quickly reduce the news to petty politics. The battle is between one conservative and four people who insist the Orange Man is a pedophile, racist conman who also is an ignorant puppet of Putin blundering his way through life.
On Fox, it is four Trump supporters up against a dull-witted student of the Alan Colmes School of Debate. Why didn’t Colmes just once smack Hannity in that smug mug of his?
Look, if we have to put up with panels, at least WWE it. Fox needs a Gene Okerlund to interview the participants after each round. Maybe have Jessica Tarlov call Greg Gutfeld a Jabroni.
Instead, the panels are predictable and boring. The cable outlets have replaced reporters with ruminators. Instead of covering news events as they happen, the cable outlets hold arguments over the news.
The only breaking news it seems is Trump doing something followed by the Democrat overreaction. Did we really have to hear Hakeem Jeffries call the Iranian mission unlawful and unconstitutional? Jeffries calls anything Trump does unlawful and unconstitutional.
It took TV less than a week to dismiss Iran as a quagmire. Today is Day 24 of Operation Epic Fury, making it a 06.575% of a year long.
Let us dive into the heart of the matter. For more than a decade, the media has dogged President Donald John Trump, portraying him as an orange villain who was always up to no good.
Now America is in a battle against real Nazis and the national news media still refuses to rally behind the president as they did FDR, Truman and both Bushes. The people in charge of TV news have turned into just another political tempest in a teapot a very serious war against allowing a rogue state to build nukes and ICBMs.
The speed and savagery of the war—picking off Islamic Republican officials like the sitting ducks they’ve become—is treated as a long forever war.
The situation reminds me of the kid in Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah who had been at Camp Grenada ONE WHOLE DAY.
The American public felt it could trust ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC when the Persian Gulf War began.
The media now blatantly takes sides, but just who are the audiences these outlets seek? Fox has the conservative audience covered but trying to appease liberals is a fool’s errand for CNN and MS NOW because liberals are never satisfied.
Besides, their side is losing in Operation Epic Fury, so liberals are skipping the news.
But the Associated Press soldiers on making the Chicago Bears rout of the Washington Redskins in the 1940 championship game look like a victory for the Redskins.
AP reported, “At war with Iran, President Donald Trump is cycling through an increasingly desperate list of options as he searches for a solution to the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. He has jumped from calls to secure the waterway through diplomatic means to lifting sanctions and now escalating to a direct threat against civilian infrastructure in the Islamic Republic.”
The Bears beat the Redskins 73-0—the worst defeat in NFL history. The difference is, the Bears didn’t decapitate the Redskins coaching staff before the game began—and AP didn’t imply Chicago had no gameplan and Coach George Halas was desperate.
Television news is doing what the rest of the TV schedule is doing: going down the tube. All of TV is—even the streaming services. Television executives went DEI (especially at Disney’s ABC) and took their audiences for granted. Their audiences are gone.
Conservative sports and news yakker Clay Travis tweeted, “Big media take: the only reason broadcast TV networks still exist is the NFL. Go look at ratings, if the NFL isn’t on NBC, CBS and Fox, what are people watching on these channels? Bigger media take: sports is the only reason cable TV still exists. Am I wrong? Debate, discuss.”
It is not that the television shows today are terribly bad. They are horribly bad. Especially the news. Instead of dumping reporters, dump the panelists.
The audience didn’t disappear—the audience migrated. People are still glued to the story, they’re just not getting it from the old gatekeepers anymore. When TV news traded reporting for panels and narratives, viewers went where the information felt faster, rawer, and less filtered. Under Donald Trump, that disconnect became impossible to ignore. The war is being followed in real time—just not on legacy broadcasts. That 42% drop isn’t apathy, it’s rejection. The public didn’t tune out—they tuned elsewhere. And until MSM figures that out, those numbers aren’t coming back.
I remember, when I was about 12 years old,
watching the news with Walter Cronkite.
Because of his blatant distortion of the facts, I thought the US was defeated in the Tet Offensive. I’m from Texas and I also remember asking my dad why was the national news always talking about the NE United States and not the rest of the country.
Liberal bias then, liberal bias now.
Haven’t watched national news on the big 3 for over 50 years because of what I experienced in my childhood.