Guess this time I don't understand the data. If the question was what did you watch in the last 24 h, there should also be a category that tells how many watched no TV news, which would include me. There are people who Mark Twain recognized as preferring to be uninformed instead of misinformed. But no question, the data shows Fox News dominance in the recent past and foreseeable future. However, it does not translate to electoral dominance, which is more 50-50 nationally, and divides in different ways regionally.
Projecting the future from current data is also risky. As Ryan notes in his fine book (a recommendation, ebook available at library) we have churches that survived wars and depressions. The full parking lots would last forever. I drove around the area on Palm Sunday. The full parking lots did not last forever. Neither did the DuPont dominance of my home state, my doctor's private office, or the Schwinn factory that made my bicycle. Public preference and consequences of leadership decisions limit future predictability.
Fox News is the greatest propaganda outlet ever created. I've spent time watching Fox News while I recorded NBC to watch later. The salient point is not what news IS reported, it's what news is NOT reported.
But all U.S. media is into a hyped up mode of "BREAKING NEWS NOW!" mode so that people no longer recognize truly important news. But I've very recently discovered an antidote to American news about America.
It's called the BBC. The anchors never raise their voices. Their questions quietly delve into the subject at hand.
And if I could give one phrase of how it made me feel to watch BBBC news tonight it would be,
"And that's the way it is. Monday, March 30th, 2026."
Most consumers of major television network news (ABC, NBC, CBS) recognize that those networks since the days of Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntly, and Frank Reynolds have turned into the liberal/progressive, political propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. Same for CNN and MSNBC. And most people are hungry for trustworthy television news with minimal bias.
Fox News provides the only option for reliable news among the group. No surprise that the majority of news viewers, including conservatives and white christians, watch the several news hour shows Fox offers daily, plus streaming news service that is also popular with Generation Z and other voters.
Your data and analysis in this post are right on the money.
The "news" is not news anymore. Fox in particular rehashes days-old stories. MSNBC and BBC give one-sided views/interviews (as Fox does). CSPAN is very good at what it does in covering current events.
Days of Cronkrite and Huntley and Brinkley are long gone. Maybe the vacuum might again be filled.
A question/comment: seems to me that Fox News "owns" rural areas/areas in states with large rural populations. Also, seems to me (both subjectively/experientially and with some academic study/digging) that the more rural an area, the less educated the area (i.e. less worldly).
So my question is: what roll does geography (and the general coverage of a station) play in who's watching which channel(s).
Also, I gave up on TV news when anchors/readers (as they are termed in GB) turned histronic.
I don't watch the news either. I get my weather updates (only during hurricane season) when there may be a threat to my area via the local weatherman on IG. Which I don't use either, I just have him on there. Not a social media person either.
I do like the shows you watch, depending on the music guest.
For the life of me I have never understood the attraction to Fox News. In their early years they were known for being the source of gibberish misinformation and nonsense. I don't know, but this was a great post Ryan. Pretty interesting data.
I usually try to locate myself on these graphs but in these I am invisible. I practically never watch any news programs at all. I look at the NYTimes online while eating breakfast. I check my substack subscriptions and maybe an Atlantic article during the day. Sometimes I listen to NPR in my car, but more often I listen to music.
The old big three are pretty much identical. You could lump them together without losing much data. Before 1980 there were noticeable differences. CBS was ferociously anti-commie, NBC was softer, and ABC was just less newsy.
One interesting distinction does show up in the Change In Network graph. Orthodox shifted into CBS. This would have been before Bari Weiss took over. Most likely related to the Ukraine war, but how? Orthodox includes a lot of Russian immigrants and a lot of Ukrainian immigrants.
Orthodoxy in the US is ~0.5% of the population, so if the Cooperative Election Survey has around 50,000 participants (as a quick web search leads me to believe) then we would expect 250 Orthodox respondents. So sampling error could play a part here, but I’m not sure how much.
Education is a major determinant of what news sources people turn to, as or more important than religion. Also, local news is not the same as national news, and all four of the TV networks have both while the other news sources in the survey do not. Even if the CES questions concerned only national news broadcasts, in all likelihood many survey respondents would not make the distinction between national and local. The point is that it's not surprising all of the networks score bigger audiences than all of the cable news channels but CNN. Plus, not everyone who imbibes Fox local news is a diehard viewer of the network's opinion programs.
The odd thing with Fox viewers that I know is they watch it constantly and certainly do not check any other news sources. It's shocking the events they know nothing about because Fox doesn't want them to know. I get it, it takes time to read up on topics, check different sources, etc. Particularly if you see a story that is a big "win" for your side, you should probably do some verification, but I see that very little.
Guess this time I don't understand the data. If the question was what did you watch in the last 24 h, there should also be a category that tells how many watched no TV news, which would include me. There are people who Mark Twain recognized as preferring to be uninformed instead of misinformed. But no question, the data shows Fox News dominance in the recent past and foreseeable future. However, it does not translate to electoral dominance, which is more 50-50 nationally, and divides in different ways regionally.
Projecting the future from current data is also risky. As Ryan notes in his fine book (a recommendation, ebook available at library) we have churches that survived wars and depressions. The full parking lots would last forever. I drove around the area on Palm Sunday. The full parking lots did not last forever. Neither did the DuPont dominance of my home state, my doctor's private office, or the Schwinn factory that made my bicycle. Public preference and consequences of leadership decisions limit future predictability.
Fox News is the greatest propaganda outlet ever created. I've spent time watching Fox News while I recorded NBC to watch later. The salient point is not what news IS reported, it's what news is NOT reported.
But all U.S. media is into a hyped up mode of "BREAKING NEWS NOW!" mode so that people no longer recognize truly important news. But I've very recently discovered an antidote to American news about America.
It's called the BBC. The anchors never raise their voices. Their questions quietly delve into the subject at hand.
And if I could give one phrase of how it made me feel to watch BBBC news tonight it would be,
"And that's the way it is. Monday, March 30th, 2026."
Most consumers of major television network news (ABC, NBC, CBS) recognize that those networks since the days of Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntly, and Frank Reynolds have turned into the liberal/progressive, political propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. Same for CNN and MSNBC. And most people are hungry for trustworthy television news with minimal bias.
Fox News provides the only option for reliable news among the group. No surprise that the majority of news viewers, including conservatives and white christians, watch the several news hour shows Fox offers daily, plus streaming news service that is also popular with Generation Z and other voters.
Your data and analysis in this post are right on the money.
The "news" is not news anymore. Fox in particular rehashes days-old stories. MSNBC and BBC give one-sided views/interviews (as Fox does). CSPAN is very good at what it does in covering current events.
Days of Cronkrite and Huntley and Brinkley are long gone. Maybe the vacuum might again be filled.
A question/comment: seems to me that Fox News "owns" rural areas/areas in states with large rural populations. Also, seems to me (both subjectively/experientially and with some academic study/digging) that the more rural an area, the less educated the area (i.e. less worldly).
So my question is: what roll does geography (and the general coverage of a station) play in who's watching which channel(s).
Also, I gave up on TV news when anchors/readers (as they are termed in GB) turned histronic.
I don't watch the news either. I get my weather updates (only during hurricane season) when there may be a threat to my area via the local weatherman on IG. Which I don't use either, I just have him on there. Not a social media person either.
I do like the shows you watch, depending on the music guest.
For the life of me I have never understood the attraction to Fox News. In their early years they were known for being the source of gibberish misinformation and nonsense. I don't know, but this was a great post Ryan. Pretty interesting data.
Thank you.
I usually try to locate myself on these graphs but in these I am invisible. I practically never watch any news programs at all. I look at the NYTimes online while eating breakfast. I check my substack subscriptions and maybe an Atlantic article during the day. Sometimes I listen to NPR in my car, but more often I listen to music.
I get my news from the BBC (radio), Propublica, Pew, a couple of substacks, etc....haven't turned on the "news" in decades.
The old big three are pretty much identical. You could lump them together without losing much data. Before 1980 there were noticeable differences. CBS was ferociously anti-commie, NBC was softer, and ABC was just less newsy.
One interesting distinction does show up in the Change In Network graph. Orthodox shifted into CBS. This would have been before Bari Weiss took over. Most likely related to the Ukraine war, but how? Orthodox includes a lot of Russian immigrants and a lot of Ukrainian immigrants.
Orthodoxy in the US is ~0.5% of the population, so if the Cooperative Election Survey has around 50,000 participants (as a quick web search leads me to believe) then we would expect 250 Orthodox respondents. So sampling error could play a part here, but I’m not sure how much.
Education is a major determinant of what news sources people turn to, as or more important than religion. Also, local news is not the same as national news, and all four of the TV networks have both while the other news sources in the survey do not. Even if the CES questions concerned only national news broadcasts, in all likelihood many survey respondents would not make the distinction between national and local. The point is that it's not surprising all of the networks score bigger audiences than all of the cable news channels but CNN. Plus, not everyone who imbibes Fox local news is a diehard viewer of the network's opinion programs.
The odd thing with Fox viewers that I know is they watch it constantly and certainly do not check any other news sources. It's shocking the events they know nothing about because Fox doesn't want them to know. I get it, it takes time to read up on topics, check different sources, etc. Particularly if you see a story that is a big "win" for your side, you should probably do some verification, but I see that very little.