It’s just a bit of trivia, but nonetheless a good corrective when we political junkies find ourselves thinking that the rest of the world is as tuned into the election-year mudfights as we are. Or when we collectively hype the purported outsized influence of cable news outlets like Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.
Last week, end-of-year figures were released on cable news audiences, and while cable news had a good 2015 in general, two things stood out to me that really put things in perspective. One, no one really watches cable news in the grand scheme of things, and two, those who do are quite old. This may seem a truism at this point, but it’s worth a look at the numbers just to reinforce the fact.
Let’s take the second point first, since it’s really quite remarkable:
The cable news channels, however, still tend to skew older: The median age for CNN viewers this year was 61, while it was 63 for MSNBC and 67 for Fox News.
. . .
Fox News had an average of 207,000 total-day viewers in the 25-to-54-year-old demographic, compared to CNN’s 149,000 and MSNBC’s 89,000.
The median age of a Fox News viewer is 67, meaning that half of the Fox News audience is older than that. And with roughly 200k viewers falling into the under-55 set, you are talking about roughly 1-in-1000 voting-age-eligible adults who are under 55 and actually watch Fox News regularly. MSNBC, as you can see, is measurably worse, and the article pauses on MSNBC’s eroding audiences to highlight why it shifted to its ‘breaking news strategy’ in the second half of 2015. An average audience of fewer than 100k under-55s is catastrophically bad. That’s about a third of what a cancelled USA Network show like Sirens or Graceland draws for the same demo (I know, I haven’t watched those shows either).
Keep in mind that, as of mid-2015, there were roughly 219 million Americans eligible to vote (146M of those registered). This means that only 1 to 2% of potential voters of any age compose even the highest-rated cable news network audience at peak viewership (the biggest draw remains the O’Reilly Factor with an average of 2.8 million viewers), and CNN and MSNBC are well behind even that mark. So to the first point, no, no one really watches cable news, even among general audiences. 2% of registered voters at peak viewership!
If you are one of those that watches MSNBC with some regularity, and participates in the Daily Kos community, it’s worth reminding yourself of just what a unicorn you probably are. Reaching people outside your niche (or your bubble, if you’re brave enough to concede the point), requires dedicated outreach, education and engagement efforts.
While Daily Kos receives 10M unique visitors a month, it’s still a few thousand activists that sustain the bulk of the diary and commenting activity on any given day. Engaged cable news audience sizes are not all that different, so when you are in the frothing pitch of primary season debate, and it seems like everything depends on that next comment you are going to post to absolutely pwn your online opponent, remember that the best course of action might be to shut the screen down for awhile, get out of the house, and actually engage voting-age adults, 98% of whom probably don’t watch cable news or log into Daily Kos. We need their votes now more than ever.