posted June 17, 2005 02:29 PM            

Besides, why shouldn't I be smiling? Prior to working for Fox, I worked for ABC and NBC, spent a lot of time at CNN and almost ended up at CBS. I worked for a bunch of local stations in Los Angeles and had a talk radio show at KABC for six years.

In other words, I'm lucky enough to have been around, and Fox News is the best place I've ever worked. I get paid well and treated with respect, and I have job security, which in this business is almost unheard of. More important, the older I get, the more the personal stuff matters.
When I got caught at last year's convention in a swirl of missed car connections and painful memories, leaving me on street corners without rides at night when old fears returned, Sean Hannity picked up his own phone and ordered a car for me 24 hours a day on his own dime.

I've come to expect the jabs at Fox News – since, being a liberal, I get more than most. I work there in part because, six or seven years ago, they offered me a better deal than NBC at the time; and because, as a feminist and a Democrat, I think it's particularly important to have a dialogue with people who aren't already members of the same choir I am, since that is the way we will ultimately have to win elections.

I also work there because of my respect for Roger Ailes, the man who created it, and hired me, and to whom I am extremely loyal for reasons having nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with integrity.

The jabs have gotten louder with success. No surprise there. When you get to No. 1 as fast and as impressively as Fox News has, it's a bull's-eye, and Roger would be the last person in the world to expect his competitors to go gently.

But things have taken a personal turn in the last week or so, as the targets have shifted from the institution as a whole to the individuals within it, including some of the most talented people at Fox News. The criticisms have gotten personal, the tone has changed, the volume is up, and the value is down. Neil Cavuto? Brian Wilson? Under attack by a Washington press corps for not probing enough on Iraq (Cavuto) and being too tough on Howard Dean (Wilson)? Give me a break.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not worried about Fox being hurt by this. Quite the contrary. If history is a guide, every time Fox News gets attacked, ratings go up.

More people will watch Cavuto, not fewer.

More people will be looking for Wilson, not fewer.

Neil Cavuto, Fox News' brilliant anchor, sat down to do an interview with George Bush last week on his business show. He didn't discuss Iraq. Neil doesn't cover Iraq. As far as I know, he had nothing new to ask him, nothing new to add and no important new question to pose, and the president had nothing new to say on the topic. There was no news to be made.

So he didn't use the opportunity either to beat up on the president or to let him say something we'd heard a hundred times. Instead, he asked him questions he didn't know the answer to, where he might get an answer he hadn't already heard.

For this, he has been summarily beaten up by the press corps all week – the same press corps that still can't figure out why it got it all wrong about those weapons of mass destruction that justified the war, but would rather have Neil Cavuto ask a pointless question of the president than ask the hard questions of itself.

Then there's Brian Wilson's great sin. In his case, the problem wasn't NOT asking a question, but trying too hard to ask tough ones of the Senate minority leader and the party chairman, who had joined together to make it look as if there was no problem when there very obviously was.

That, and using a swear word in answering a question from a Washington Post reporter – Brian himself later admitted that he wished he'd known it was a Post reporter.

The Dean charge is, of course, the more serious one, particularly since the party chairman has taken to attacking Fox News in recent days. There certainly is disagreement among Democrats as to whether party leaders such as Joe Biden and John Edwards should have gone public with the obvious criticism that Dean had gone too far in calling Republicans a party of white Christians who don't work.

But I'm hard-pressed to think of anybody who will tell you privately that in the midst of debates about such issues as Social Security and the deficits, it's a good idea for the party leader to be turning himself into the issue by engaging in class and religious warfare.

This is precisely what congressional leaders and Dean agreed that Dean would not do when he became the chair of the party. He was supposed to leave the message to them. Having not done so, and having been criticized for it by two possible presidential candidates – neither of whom are even conservatives – Sen. Reid was trying to put the perennial good face on a bad situation, while Brian Wilson was trying to puncture it.

That's what the press is supposed to do, last time I checked. If being obnoxious was a disqualification for being a member of the Washington press corps, it would a lonely crowd.

Former Gov. Dean, asked to respond to Vice President Cheney's comments about him to Fox's Sean Hannity, said, "My view is that Fox News is a propaganda outlet for the Republican Party, and I don't comment on Fox News."

Three times as many people watch Fox every day as watch CNN. There were certainly times during the last campaign where I disagreed with decisions made by young producers working at Fox. But without exception, every time I raised an issue, I won – I saw it as my job to teach off the air, as much as to talk on the air. If anyone disagreed, the joke was that I would tell them to set their stopwatches and transfer me to Roger, so they could time how long it would take me to get their decisions reversed.

It never came to that, but everyone understood the commitment to not make decisions that would even give the appearance that Dean so cavalierly bandies about.

posted June 17, 2005 07:03 PM            

Total viewers:

Total day:
FNC: 1,012,000
CNN: 490,000
MSNBC: 201,000
HLN: 228,000
CNBC: 112,000

Primetime:
FNC: 2,201,000
CNN: 915,000
MSNBC: 338,000
HLN: 404,000
CNBC: 107,000

25-54 demographic:

Total day:
FNC: 328,000
CNN: 171,000
MSNBC: 77,000
HLN: 108,000
CNBC: 34,000

Primetime:
FNC: 617,000
CNN:: 287,000
MSNBC: 131,000
HLN: 145,000
CNBC: 45,000

The hourlies:

5pm:
Gibson: 1,097,000
Blitzer: 529,000
Connected: 151,000
Kudlow: 105,000

6pm:
Hume: 1,280,000
Dobbs: 520,000
Abrams: 205,000
Mad Money: 130,000

7pm:
Shep: 1,563,000
Cooper: 618,000
Hardball: 330,000
Showbiz: 166,000
Conan: 111,000

8pm:
O'Reilly: 2,722,000
Zahn: 718,000
Countdown: 459,000
Grace: 583,000
Contender: 111,000

9pm:
H&C: 2,016,000
King: 1,277,000
Situation: 231,000
Prime News: 292,000
Mad Money repeat: 100,000

posted June 18, 2005 03:46 AM            

Believe me I'm not suggesting that they're not number one. I'm suggesting that saying you're number one is a flimsy argument for your worth.

Winner Best Picture 2004 Cannes Film Festival:

Farenheit 9/11
http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1488708/06282004/story.jhtml

'Fahrenheit 9/11' Breaks Box-Office Record
Film is first documentary to debut at #1.

The film went on to gross more than $100 million. (This is in spite of the Motion Picture Association of America imposing an R rating on the film which restricts those under 17 years old from seeing the film unless accompanied by an adult. Industry sources cited by USA Today estimate such a classification cuts approximately 20% from sales).

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The point here, and please don't get it wrong, is that SPIN coupled with sensationalism, and good marketing can create a stir watched or read by loads and loads of people regardless of accuracy or worth.