Reviews Of Movie Critics For "Melania" Are Universally Brutal

 

From Rottentomatoes.com

The Trump Indictments Have Increased MSNBC Viewership

 The following is part of a posting at Axios.com:

MSNBC has seen a boost in primetime ratings this summer, thanks in large part to its coverage of the slew of indictments against former President Donald Trump.

Why it matters: Fox News has been the undisputed cable news ratings leader for years. But Trump's legal woes, combined with Tucker Carlson's departure from Fox, have helped MSNBC close in on Fox News' prime-time lead several times in the past few months. 

Driving the news: MSNBC beat Fox News in primetime last Monday and Tuesday evenings thanks to its coverage of Trump's indictment in a fourth major case in Georgia over efforts to overturn the presidential election's outcome.

• Rachel Maddow's interview with Hillary Clinton after the indictment drew an unprecedented 3.9 million viewers on Monday evening. 
• The network narrowly beat Fox News in primetime on Monday, July 10, as well, although it surpassed Fox more consistently during the second quarter. 
• Mondays tend to be MSNBC's highest-rated primetime evenings, given that's when Maddow continues to regularly host her 9 p.m. show. 

Flashback: MSNBC starting to beat Fox News in primetime periodically following Carlson's departure in the April. 

• The network beat Fox News in primetime ratings for a full week in early June during its coverage of Trump's second indictment on charges relating to classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, ending Fox News' 120-week primetime winning streak.
• Throughout several points during the second quarter, MSNBC also beat Fox News in the prized 25-54 year-old advertising demographic.
• While most of the country is experiencing some level of fatigue over Trump's legal battles, MSNBC's viewership has increased with each subsequent indictment.

MSNBC Leads In Daytime Viewers For The 1st Quarter

 

The Nielsen numbers show that for the first quarter of 2021, MSNBC led all other cable shows in daytime ratings. Fox led in primetime for the quarter, although both MSNBC and CNN narrowed the gap. During the week of the January 6th insurrection, CNN led in average viewers.

Trump Impeachment Hearing Had An Inauspicious Start

The chart above shows the Nielsen TV rating numbers for the opening day last Wednesday of the Trump impeachment hearings. The numbers, to say the least were very disappointing. According to Nielsen, only about 13.8 million people watched.

Nielsen numbers don't include PBS, C-SPAN, or those who streamed the proceedings live on their phones or computers -- but I doubt the total including those would be much higher. The nearly 14 million viewers would make up only about 10% of the voters in the 2016 election.

Democrats were hoping that the hearings being telecast would convince more voters that Trump should be removed from office after being impeached. They noted that the public only turned on Nixon after viewing his impeachment hearings (by the end of those hearing about 85% of U.S. households had viewed at least some of those hearings). But if that's going to happen, then the viewership must increase substantially.

Will the viewership increase as the hearings continue? or have most voters already made up their minds on whether Trump should be impeached and removed from office? I fear the latter may be the case.

Historians Rate Trump As One Of The Worst Presidents Ever

Siena College has questioned 157 presidential scholars, historians, and political scientists. They asked them to rate each of the U.S. presidents from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) in 20 different categories. When the results were computed, it gave a rating of all the presidents from best to worst. Donald Trump did not fare well, coming in at 42 (with only James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson being rated worse.

U.S. Falls To 45th On List Of Countries With A Free Press

Reporters Without Borders has released its 2018 World Press Freedom Index. That index ranks each country on how free the press is in that country.

They judge each country's press on seven areas. Those areas are:

1 / Pluralism 

Measures the degree to which opinions are represented in the media.

2/ Media independence 

Measures the degree to which the media are able to function independently of sources of political, governmental, business and religious power and influence.

3/ Environment and self-censorship 

Analyses the environment in which news and information providers operate.

4/ Legislative framework 

Measures the impact of the legislative framework governing news and information activities.

5/ Transparency 

Measures the transparency of the institutions and procedures that affect the production of news and information.

6/  Infrastructure 

Measures the quality of the infrastructure that supports the production of news and information.

A seventh indicator based on data gathered about abuses and acts of violence against journalists and media during the period evaluated is also factored into the calculation.

7/ Abuses 

Measures the level of abuses and violence.

The lower a country's score is, the freer the press in that country is. Here's what the numbers mean:

0 - 15 = Good
15.01 - 25 = Fairly Good
25.01 - 35 = Problematic
35.01 - 55 = Bad
55.01 - 100 = Very Bad

Only 17 countries scored in the good range.

The United States has always prided itself on having a free press, and I think most Americans would assume the United States is one of those 17 countries rated as "good". It is not! The United States has slipped all the way down to 45th place, with a rating of 23.73. That puts it in the "fairly good" category -- and in danger of slipping into the "problematic" category.

This should bother all Americans. A democracy must have a vibrant free press to exist. If the press is not free, then a democracy will slip into a tyrannical form of government.

Why is the United States rated so low? That should be obvious. A big reason is the constant attacks on the press by Donald Trump and too many of his Republican cohorts in Congress. They are waging war on our press in an attempt to cover up the incompetence and possible criminality of Trump. They label the press as lying and printing "fake news", and too many Americans accept those accusations as fact. It is doing serious damage to freedom of the press in this country.

This must stop. When government attacks the press, they attack our democracy.

Trump's SOTU Audience Was Smaller Than Last 3 Presidents

Trump is once again showing his complete lack of regard for the truth. He is claiming that the audience for his first State of the Union speech was the "highest in history". That is just more of his alternate facts, and not representative of the real facts.

The chart above shows the Nielsen ratings for the first State of the Union speech by Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump. Note that he had the smallest audience of any of these four presidents -- 200,000 less than Clinton, 6,200,000 less than Bush, and 2,400,000 less than Obama.

Even in his last year's speech to Congress (which was not really a State of the Union since he had just taken office) he finished third to Clinton and Obama -- beating only the first speech of Bush.

This is reminiscent of his claims about having the largest inauguration crowd in history, when government photos  show that was not even close to the truth. He also claimed to have the largest electoral college win, but history shows us that several presidents have had larger victories.

Trump is a narcissist, and his narcissism demands that he be first (or best) in everything. Unfortunately for him, the facts have never come up to his ludicrous claims and wishes.

Public Doesn't Think Trump Will Go Down As A Good Prez

This newly released poll asked respondents to rate the last seven presidents. It is the Economist / YouGov Poll that was done between January 14th and 16th of a random national sample of 1,500 adults, with a margin of error of 3.3 points.

I'm still surprised at how many people think Ronald Reagan was a good president. About 56% said he was an above average president (the only president receiving a majority of above average votes). People still don't understand that it was Reagan that sowed the seeds of economic disaster that came to fruition in George W. Bush's second term. It took a few years for the disaster to happen, but that doesn't change the fact that it was Reagan's implementation of "trickle-down" economic policy that started the nation on the course to the Great Recession.

Barack Obama (42%) and Bill Clinton (39%) are the other two presidents to have above average as their highest percentage. Both Bushes and Carter go down as average.

It's Donald Trump that takes the biggest hit. A majority of 51% rate him as a below average president, while only 39% rate him as average or above average.

The Human Rights Campaign Rates 7 Texas Cities Above Average In Guaranteeing Rights To Their LGBTQ Citizens

The Human Rights Campaign has released its Municipal Equality Index (MEI) for this year. They rated the major cities in the United States five categories:

* Non-discrimination ordinances: The presence or absence of local laws barring discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.

* Municipality as an employer: Whether the city protects its own LGBT workers from discrimination on the job and offers inclusive health care benefits.

* Municipal services: Whether the city has a local "human rights commission" focused on LGBT citizens with a designated community liaison and whether anti-bullying rules are in place in schools.

* Law enforcement: Evaluates the relationship of the police force to LGBT citizens and tracks whether law enforcement reports hate crimes to the FBI.

* Relationship with the LGBT community: How local leaders publicly express their stance on LGBT rights, and whether they push LGBT legislation.

Seven Texas cities were rated above the national average of 55. Four of them did very well -- Austin (100), Fort Worth (100), Dallas (100), and San Antonio (95). Three others also topped the national average, but still have work to do to guarantee equal rights to their LGBTQ citizens -- Plano (74), Houston (71), and El Paso (57). The other 18 Texas cities rated all finished below the national average.

The largest cities in the other states were also rated in the HRC's MEI scorecards. If you would like to see how your city rated, you can go here.

Favorability Ratings Of Clinton/Sanders Among Democrats

These numbers are from surveys done in the past month by the Gallup Poll. As the campaign moves beyond the almost all-white states of Iowa and New Hampshire, it shows that Sanders still has some ground to make up among non-white voters. It will be interesting to see how he does in Nevada this weekend. In the last presidential caucus, Hispanics made up about 35% of caucus-goers.

Clinton's Net Favorability Higher Than Sanders' Among Dems

The chart above was made from results of a recent Gallup Poll -- done between December 30th and January 14th of a random national sample of 800 Democrats and Democratic leaners, with a margin of error of 4 points.

This survey helps to explain why Hillary Clinton continues to lead Bernie Sanders on the national stage. Clinton has a net favorability (favorable minus unfavorable) of 57%, while Sanders has a net favorability of 48%. That's a fairly significant difference of 9 points.

Sanders is viewed more favorably by two groups -- a 23 point edge among those 18 to 29, and a 6 point edge among whites. Men are split between the two candidates (with Clinton's 3 point edge being within the margin of error). All other groups have a significantly higher net favorability for Clinton.

Fox Viewership Down Significantly In May

(This cartoon image is by Joe Mohr at elephant journal.com.)

Fox News viewership dropped significantly in May of 2014, and for the desirable 25 to 54 age group, it was the lowest since 2001. Here is how TV Newser puts it:

Fox News hit a series of 13-year lows among younger viewers this month.

The ratings for May 2014 (Nielsen Live + Same Day data):

• Primetime (Mon-Sun): 1,455,000 total viewers / 221,000 A25-54
• Total Day Mon-Sun): 902,000 total viewers / 177,000 A25-54

Fox News, like all the cable news networks, was down compared the same month last year: the network was down -27% in total viewers and -25% in the A25-54 demographic in total day and -26% and -28%, respectively, in primetime.

In both total day and primetime, Fox News delivered its lowest ratings in the A25-54 demographic since August 2001, before the network took over as the number one cable news network. “Fox & Friends,” which leads the cable news morning shows in both total viewers and the demo, also had its lowest demo delivery since August 2001.

All the network’s primetime shows are down double-digits year-over-year. “The O’Reilly Factor” is down -28% in total viewers and -30% in the A25-54 demo. “The Kelly File” is down -17% in total viewers and -27% in the demo compared to the 9pmET hour last year and “Hannity” is down -30% and -23%, respectively, compared to the 10pmET hour last year.

But the drop in viewers in May is not the worst news. Only about 20% of their viewers are in the age group (25 to 54) preferred by advertisers (and it's worse in primetime, totaling about 15%). That means nearly four out of every five Fox viewers is 55 years old or older -- and the average age of a Fox News viewer is 68.8 years old. That's the oldest viewership of any cable news network (or any news network at all) -- and it certainly doesn't bode well for the future of Fox News.

Stations Carrying Limbaugh Doing Poorly In The Ratings

(This caricature of Rush Limbaugh is by the inimitable DonkeyHotey.)

A few years ago, Rush Limbaugh was the king of talk radio and talk radio was very popular. Those days are gone. That is the opinion of industry expert Holland Cooke, who says:

The conversation really picked up on February 29, 2012, Leap Year Day which was Day 1 of this three-day Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke faux pas. And, if we were studying the history of talk radio, you stick a pin in the timeline there because at that moment, a very well organized and relentless advertiser boycott effort which remains underway today, rendered that business inviable.

Hundreds of blue-chip national advertisers basically have not only wandered away from Rush Limbaugh and some of the other righties, they’ve abandoned the format entirely.  They are afraid to be heard on a news talk station because this man’s use of his free speech triggered the opposing viewpoint exercising THEIR right to free speech.

The boycotters are speaking and using the marketplace to say, “ENOUGH!”  So as a consequence of all of this, the very company that owns, for instance, The Rush Limbaugh Show, which owns a bunch of great big talk stations has actually demoted him to smaller talk stations in two really big markets.  You and I did an Ed Show about this at the time. In Los Angeles and San Francisco they moved him aside because his continuing presence was making it tough to make a go of it with the big stations.

So he was told to go sit at the kid’s table and the irony in this is that for years the radio righties have been cackling about progressive radio’s failure to attain their level of listenership while the radio lefties had to go sit at the kid’s table.  Well now he’s there. . .

So the short answer is talk radio as we know it, the crazy uncle righty politically monologue-based I’m right you’re wrong genre is mathematically in trouble.

How bad is it? Well look at the ratings of the stations carrying Rush Limbaugh's show in the biggest markets. The stations carrying Limbaugh are 22nd in New York, 37th in Los Angeles, 19th in Chicago, 21st in Dallas, and 27th in San Francisco. That's a far cry from where he was a couple of years ago. The company Rush works for has removed him from their big stations (because he was losing them too much market share and money), and put him on smaller stations with less power (and therefore less reach).

Now some will say that this is censorship and a violation of free speech -- but that is nonsense. The constitutional guarantee of free speech just guarantees that the government will not punish Rush (or anyone else) for their speech. It does not say the public at large, or the radio stations, can't act in their own interests. The public, including those urging an advertising boycott, have just as much right to free speech as Rush does -- and their speech has been very effective (costing him more than 3100 advertisers).

The truth is that the free market (which right-wingers say they support) has spoken, and it is saying it wants nothing to do with Limbaugh. His days of radio supremacy are over. He may or may not get a new contract, but if he does it will be for far less than he's now making. His marketability has fallen drastically.

Fox News Still Losing Critical 25-54 Age Demographic

There is both good and bad news for Fox News after the the ratings for the full year of 2013 were revealed. The good news is that Fox is still the leader among the cable news networks. The bad news is that their ratings are dropping, especially among the critical age demographic of 25 to 54 year olds (the demographic most sought by advertisers) -- and unless they can somehow turn that around, they will wind up on the bottom of the heap (both in advertising dollars and viewership).

According to the website TVNEWSER, Fox has 1,761,000 viewers for all day, and 1,097,000 in primetime. But only a very small part of those viewers are in the 25 to 54 age group -- 16.69% for all day and 20.23% for primetime. That means that 83.31% of all day viewers and 79.77% of primetime viewers are not in that prime demographic -- and almost all of them are over 54 years old. In fact, the average age of a Fox News viewer is now 65 years old.

Those are very bad numbers for Fox News, and predict a bleak future for the network. As their old viewers die off, there are not sufficient numbers of young viewers to replace them -- which means the ratings will continue to drop (until their numbers are even worse than CNN's). And the numbers in the 25 to 54 age bracket keep falling for Fox (indicating that their efforts to stop the bleeding are not working).

In 2013, viewers in that demographic dropped by 19% for the total day viewing. For primetime, it was even worse with a drop of 30%. And that was evident in all the primetime shows -- with Hannity showing a 16% drop, while Kelly and O'Reilly dropped 23%.

Younger viewers just don't like the far-right-wing political bent of Fox News. They are much more tolerant of the LGBT community, immigrants, minorities, and women, and believe the rights of those groups must be protected. They just don't like the hate toward those groups being spewed forth by Fox News. That is very good for this country as a whole, but it is very bad for Fox news.

BBC Poll Rating Of 16 Countries & E.U.

Those who believe in American "exceptionalism" (the idea that the United States is by far the best country in the world) are not going to like the results of the newest BBC Country Ratings Poll. The BBC does this poll each year, interviewing over 26,000 people about whether they hold a negative or positive view of 16 countries and the European Union. To be fair, the respondents living in a particular country are excluded when figuring the average percentages for each country.

As you can see from the graphic above, the United States finished in the middle of the pack -- with 6 countries and the European Union having both a higher positive rating and a lower negative rating. The U.S. was viewed positively by 45% of respondents and negatively by 34% of respondents. Last year those numbers for the U.S. was 47% positive and 33% negative (which means the U.S. has dropped a bit in the estimation of those living in other countries). Note that less than half of those living in other countries have a positive view of the U.S.

This year Germany was rated the most popular country (with a 59% positive rating and 15% negative rating). Last year Japan was the most popular country, but this year they dropped 7 points from their positive rating and added 6 points to their negative rating -- dropping them down to fourth in the rating poll. Iran was the least popular country (with a 15% positive rating and a 59% negative rating -- exactly the opposite of Germany's numbers). Iran was also the least popular last year.

Nielsen Numbers For Inauguration

We already knew that the crowd that showed up to see the president take his oath of office last Monday was down from four years ago. There were only about 800,000 this year (as compared to well over a million in 2009). But Democrats shouldn't feel bad, since crowds are normally less for a second term inauguration -- and the crowd was still nearly twice as big as George W. Bush could muster for his second term.

Now the Nielsen rating service has released the preliminary numbers for those watching the inauguration on television. Those numbers were also down (but still above the numbers for Bush). Here are the numbers:

NBC....................5.08 million
ABC....................4.57 million
CBS....................3.67 million
CNN....................3.14 million
MSNBC................2.27 million
FNC....................1.32 million

Ratings Drop Sharply For Hannity At Fox

The two most popular commentators on Fox News, by far, are Bill O'Reilly (who gets about 4.1 million viewers) and Sean Hannity (who gets slightly less than 4 million viewers). Fox already had O'Reilly locked into a long-term contract, and last April they moved to do the same for Hannity. Although the salary numbers were not released, it is known that Hannity has been signed through the 2016 campaign season at least. This had the Fox News executives feeling pretty smug -- at least until the election debacle that was totally misjudged by Fox commentators.

For months before the election, Hannity preached to his viewers that Willard Mitt Romney was a lock to win the election, and he brought on a whole cadre of right-wingers to back up his perception. Even when polls began to show that Romney was falling short of expectations, especially in the critical swing states, Hannity keep up his misguided prediction (saying the polls were skewed and Romney was really ahead). It is because of this total misreading of the American electorate by Hannity and his Fox News cohorts, that right-wingers (who depend exclusively on Fox for their "news") were so shocked at the real thumping the Republicans received on election night.

Now Fox News might be regretting the long contract they gave Hannity, because it looks like a large part of his audience has abandoned him (perhaps angry because he was so badly wrong about the election). Hannity's December numbers have dropped from nearly 4 million viewers to around 1.95 million viewers. That's a drop in his rating of nearly 50%. And that's not all of the bad news. In the 25 to 54 age demographic (the group most coveted by advertisers), the drop was even more -- falling more than 50%.

In addition, for the first time at least two of the MSNBC commentators have received ratings higher than Hannity's. Those commentators are Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell. A few months ago, most people would not have thought that was possible.

O'Reilly fared a little better than Hannity did. His viewership only dropped by about 30%. The December ratings show he lost about 1.1 million viewers. It's starting to look like even right-wingers don't appreciate being lied to and told that things are going their way when the opposite is true.

Fox News Struggling Since The Election

For quite a while now, the news team at the NBC News cable channel (formerly called MSNBC) has finished a poor second to the talking heads at Fox News. But a surprising thing has happened since the election. According to the Nielsen ratings for November 7th through November 16th, NBC's cable channel has logged 8% more viewers than Fox news in the 24 to 54 demographic (the most coveted age group for advertisers). In addition, News Corpse says:

Particularly impressive were the results of the two powerhouse programs on the MSNBC lineup: Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell. Maddow won seven of the eight days against her Fox competition, Sean Hannity. For the 8-day run Maddow beat Hannity by 18% and her 544k average was second to only Bill O’Reilly in all of cable news. O’Donnell won all eight days against Fox’s Greta Van Susteren. His margin of victory over Van Susteren was 17% for the eight days.

This can no longer be considered a temporary blip on the ratings scales. With two weeks having elapsed, the MSNBC programs are showing steady strength against competition that was once thought insurmountable. Only Bill O’Reilly is holding his top position for Fox in primetime. This may indicate that Sean Hannity is wearing thin with viewers who are likely disappointed with his overly confident (and harebrained) assurances that all the polls were wrong and that Mitt Romney would emerge victorious.

Hannity is perhaps the most stridently partisan host on the Fox News network and frequently augments his analysis with that of the pundit world’s most notorious nutcase, Dick Morris. As for Van Susteren, she never had the cult-like following of her Fox comrades, but she has been closely associated with her good friend (and client of her husband), Sarah Palin. That association may also have become a drag on the ratings of her show. 

Those are encouraging numbers. At least for the last couple of weeks, people seem more interested in getting real facts instead of the steady diet of lies being put out by Fox News. The real question now is whether NBC can sustain this. I hope they can, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens.