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Election Night Was Disappointing For The GOP And Traditional TV Coverage

“Why did 10 million fewer people watch election coverage on the networks this year?”

Andy Bloom

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Did you watch much Election Night coverage? Surrounded by a bank of screens, I watched as many as five different networks simultaneously. 

Television has a clear Election Night 2022 ratings winner: Fox News dominated the traditional and cable news networks. Its total viewers doubled the number of Election Night’s second and third-rated networks in addition to those of its two cable news rivals, MSNBC and CNN.

Nielsen Primetime Viewership Election Night 11/9/22 – Total Viewers

  1. Fox – 7.42 million
  2. ABC – 3.31 million
  3. MSNBC – 3.21 million
  4. NBC – 3.11 million
  5. CNN – 2.61 million
  6. CBS – 2.56 million

Fox News also won among 25 – 54-year-olds.

Further, Fox has a larger audience than MSNBC, and CNN combined, in both total viewers and 25 – 54-year-olds, during each hour of prime time.

Detractors can continue to make derogatory remarks about Fox News Channel. However, it offers the marketplace something that a large number of viewers across a wide range of demographics prefer. 

Republicans weren’t the only ones whose Election Night hopes fell short of expectations. It wasn’t a great night for television news either. 

The total number of viewers was disappointing, considering the interest in this election. Nielsen data (published in numerous sources) shows that slightly over 22 million people watched primetime election coverage on the three major networks and three major cable news networks (ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and NBC). That’s off nearly one-third from the 2018 midterms when the same six outlets combined for 32.5 million people.

Why did 10 million fewer people watch election coverage on the networks this year? 

Possibilities include:

  • Cord-cutters may account for the greatest losses
  • Alternative networks have improved coverage and are stealing audience – NewsMax for conservatives and NPR for liberals. Univision, Telemundo, and Fox Business presented more extensive reporting than in the past.
  • Trust in the media is at an all-time low. Many people choose to get information from other sources instead of television networks.
  • Perhaps there was less interest in the 2022 elections than in 2018 when Trump was in office. We don’t have final data for 2022 yet.
  • Maybe interest in the 2018 midterms was an anomaly. According to the Census Bureau, the 2018 election had the highest participation for any midterm since at least 1978. 
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Each network lost audience compared to the 2018 midterms. Fox lost the least, about 5% of its 2018 Election Night coverage. ABC was down 38%, MSNBC by 32%, NBC 45%, CBS 33%, and CNN by almost half (these Nielsen numbers are from “Variety”).

CNN: It was a particularly bad night for CNN. It was the first Election Night since Chris Licht took over as its President. It was also the first time the network lost the battle for total viewers to MSNBC on Election Night.

The first noticeable difference in CNN’s coverage was the absence of Wolf Blitzer, who has hosted its Election Night for as long as I can remember. As CNN’s election anchor, Blitzer made the historic announcements of Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s elections and was the first TV anchor to call the 2020 election for Joe Biden.

Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper shared CNN lead anchor duties while John King manned the “Magic Wall.” However, Cooper or one of several data analysts would often join King at the “Magic Wall.”

CNN’s “Magic Wall” got my attention. The technology worked and provided the most valuable data, such as graphically showing where votes were outstanding.

CNN had the best use of technology. It’s something to build on. 

The problem with CNN is you can’t call it journalism. It is so far in the tank for Democrats and so against Republicans that it’s hard to watch unless you are a liberal. Except, MSNBC is the liberal network – and it beat CNN.

It’s one thing to have somebody like David Axelrod, Obama’s former chief political strategist, openly rooting for Democrats – or Karl Rove on Fox News. But Tapper, Cooper, “chief political analyst” Gloria Borger – and most of the other people serving as anchors and reporters might as well have broken out the paper hats, noise-makers, and champagne throughout their coverage.

If CNN president Chris Licht hopes to make CNN watchable (let alone successful again), he must clean house and overhaul the talent.

Is it that difficult to see the hole for a network that provides information – journalism without anchors that openly root for one side and against the other? 

ABC: CNN wasn’t the only network to change its longtime election anchor. World News Tonight anchor David Muir led ABC’s coverage for the first time. Good Morning America and This Week host George Stephanopolous has been the lead on Election Night for nearly two decades.

Muir did an excellent, steady job. If he has a political opinion, I couldn’t tell. I appreciated his unbiased view, although that didn’t hold quite as well when political director Rick Klein and FiveThirtyEight editor Nate Silver added commentary.

ABC also added a new graphics package and tri-screen interactive voting data that Klein and Silver used to feature exit polling numbers.

Its panel of experts is ABC’s weakness. Donna Brazille (who has been on every other network). Heidi Heitkamp and Chris Christie aren’t strong draws.

ABC is probably the most straightforward of the networks and has the second-highest ratings after Fox,

Fox News: Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum anchored the Fox News Democracy 2022 desk. To be sure, the coverage on Fox included plenty of conservative commentary from Karl Rove, Trey Gowdy, Kellyanne Conway, and the usual Fox Primetime hosts. But there is always a liberal included on the panel. 

If we remove identifying markers such as IDs and handoffs with conservatives – and could make them unknown – Baier and MacCallum would get high marks from media reviewers. I’ll make a declarative statement; Baier, MacCallum, and Bill Hemmer are as unbiased as any anchors that did Election Night coverage – and in fact, less biased. 

I will say the same about Bill Hemmer’s analysis from the “Bill-board.” However, where CNN’s technology worked flawlessly, Fox’s frequently did not. Perhaps it was just technical issues, but I found CNN’s “Magic Wall made its points easier to understand – when not riddled with bias.

Forgetting what you think about his partisanship, Rove is a genius. He knows every county and Congressional District in the nation. He can break down the towns and precincts within them. There is no better analyst – although he has points of view that others won’t agree with.

There were two things on Fox that didn’t work: The “focus group” segments. I’m not fond of the concept in general. A group of people who are in a studio and know they will be on television with opposing views isn’t authentic. It is more effective to interview people after exit polling,

I also didn’t understand the Shannon Bream voter analysis data. It seemed part exit poll and part pre-election poll. The last thing anybody wanted to hear on election night was more polling.

MSNBC: I lasted about three minutes with MSNBC. 

I thought they put Rachel Maddow out to pasture.  

Liberals probably have the same visceral reaction to Fox that I do to MSNBC. I saw a clip online from later in the night where an MSNBC reporter suggested John Fetterman was a candidate for 2024. Somebody, please tell me this is fake news or at least a joke. 

NBC: Used a combination of four anchors, including Meet the Press Moderator Chuck Todd, Today Show Co-Host Savannah Guthrie, Nightly News Anchor Lester Holt, and Andrea Mitchell. 

It might as well have been MSNBC. Conservatives consider this group to have a considerable liberal bias – and not without good reason.

The most curious part of NBC’s coverage was the QR code that kept flashing in the corner of the screen. Scanning the code brought you to their blog – apparently – something I had neither the time nor interest in doing.

While CNN, Fox, CBS, and ABC seemed to have reporters on-site in every major battleground, NBC had the fewest – or at least I caught the fewest cutaways to them.

NBC was the first to make the call for John Fetterman in the Pennsylvania Senate race. I’m still undecided whether this is because they have better analytics or their more Democratic view of the world 

CBS: Norah O’Donnell anchored “America Decides,” flanked by the network’s chief political analyst John Dickerson and morning co-host Gayle King. The latter just seemed strangely out of place. The Mariah Carey interview now online feels more in her wheelhouse, but maybe that’s my problem.

CBS also was the most cautious in calling elections, moving races from “toss-up” to “leans” to “likely” before making a projection.

For the first time, CBS News had something it called its “Democracy Desk.” It used this new feature to track “election deniers” and all the scary things Democrats talked about in the final couple of weeks before the election.

We’re going to come back to this Democracy Desk. 

Since I’m a conservative, I pay the most attention to Fox and find it impossible to watch MSNBC. It doesn’t surprise me that Fox is easily the top-rated network for Election Night coverage.

I appreciate the technology CNN utilizes, but CNN is the second “I hate Trump” network. I’ll ask it again, How difficult is it to see that the hole is for a network that provides information without anchors that openly root for one side and against the other? The other question is how much lower will the ratings have to go before CNN realizes that’s its only position?

ABC is working toward filling the hole that CNN should occupy – except that it won’t do it full-time. They also have the second-best technology after CNN.

Beyond those three, I didn’t find much worse spending my time on.

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BNM Writers

News is the Only Thing Missing From Election Coverage

Coverage of the election is, as we’ve discussed, still very horse-race-centric, and there’s been, of course, coverage of the various Trump court cases, but where is the coverage of exactly what the candidates plan to do if elected?

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A photo featuring I voted stickers

The first thought I had when I heard NBC had hired Ronna McDaniel as a commentator for $300,000 a year was to wonder how many actual journalists they could have hired for that money. Then, I recalled that NBC had laid off dozens of news staffers just a few months ago. Then, I remembered that I had just recently written a column decrying news organizations throwing pretty much anybody on the air as a “pundit” and this….

This was worse. It’s one thing to grab some rando who happened to be a minor functionary for the Executive Branch. It’s another to hire someone whose job was to promote election denialism and pretend that her opinion is something valuable for viewers. And, yes, it’s just as ridiculous when news organizations hire former presidential press secretaries (that’s you, Jen Psaki and Sean Spicer), their very jobs were to spin everything in their bosses’ favor and now you’re going to pay them big salaries for, um, what? Because they “have a name” or you’re afraid someone else will snap them up? Why them?

The McDaniel deal lasted five days, one completely unilluminating interview, and one unexpected Chuck Todd spine-growing outburst, so it’ll all blow over soon enough. The problem is, though, the part about having fired several news staffers, and what it means in an election year on both the national and local levels. If you have the money to hire an alleged pundit – any alleged pundit – you have the money to hire reporters, and I don’t mean anchors or opinion show hosts.

Coverage of the election is, as we’ve discussed, still very horse-race-centric, and there’s been, of course, coverage of the various Trump court cases, but where is the coverage of exactly what the candidates plan to do if elected? Who’s probing Project 2025 and why isn’t it front-page, first-segment news? Who’s pressing the Biden administration on Gaza? Is anyone reporting on the candidates’ record on climate change?

Beyond prescription drug prices, is anyone digging into the broken healthcare system and demanding answers from the candidates about what they’ll do to fix it (and not letting Trump get away with “I’ll have a better plan, a beautiful plan” without a single specific detail, like they did in 2016)? Why didn’t anyone focus on, for example, the GOP candidate for governor of North Carolina and his incendiary past comments well before the primary?

Pundits are not going to do the legwork on the issues; they’ll just talk about swing states while John King and Steve Kornacki point at their touchscreen maps. We need reporting on the things that matter (and can affect that horse race, even if most people have made up their minds). It shouldn’t just be Pro Publica and scattered independent journalists doing the dirty work.

Honestly, I don’t want to hear the complaints about the quality of the candidates or how this is a rerun or any of that. (We’ll leave that to The New York Times.) We are a horribly underinformed electorate and we got the horse race we deserve. It might just be idealists like me who think that, just maybe, the news media can play a role in educating the public and bursting the bubbles and echo chambers. This country has survived and prospered for a few centuries with the press shining a light on injustice and corruption.

Now, when we need that most, they’re more concerned with what they think will bring them ratings and money (although someone will have to explain to me who thought having Ronna McDaniel as a paid commentator would draw a single viewer to NBC).

Here’s a thought: Don’t lay off reporters, especially in an election year.  Assign them to dig deep on issues that matter to the voters.

Let the pundits talk about that.

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8 Ways to Take Your Commercials From Drab to Fab

Our main source of income is derived from commercials. There are a lot of bad commercials.

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Another reason to read this column, I often add an Easter egg. We are in the advertising business. Our main source of income is derived from commercials. There are a lot of bad commercials. Frequently, clients write these ads. You can excuse it if the spots suck. But when the commercials are written by Account Executives or the production department at the station, it is kind of unforgivable.

I am going to share the most meaningless phrases in commercials.

Locally Owned and Operated

Customers do not care. If customers cared about a business being locally owned and operated, Walmart would not exist. People want service, selection, and value. They do not want to get soaked. When you purchase something, are you willing to pay 20% for a local company? If you say yes, you are wrong. People want a deal.

The Phone Number

Doing 70 down the 405, John slammed on the brakes to write down the phone number for an amazing HVAC Company. That is not how it works people. HVAC companies rarely have or should have regular customers.

Normally, your AC is out. You call the HVAC Company that you are familiar with. Radio advertising allows people to have “TOMA”: Top of Mind Awareness. There are stats that show when a company is advertising on your radio station, their website shows an increase in traffic. When you needed a service for your home, you hit Google and choose the company that you’ve heard of. It’s that simple. I actually heard a commercial asking listeners to add a businesses phone number to their contact list. That is a moronic use of advertising real estate.

Street Addresses

“Tequilaberry’s Prime Rib is located at 106 East Governors Drive in Peoria.” 

The people listening cannot process that detail. You could say “Tequilaberry’s Prime Rib is on Governors Drive just off 10th in Peoria.” That is almost digestible. That creates a picture of where it is.

Trust me, people interested in prime rib will Google you and load the address in their navigation system. Spend that precious spot time selling the experience of the restaurant.

Always Using the Company Owner/Founder in Commercials

Sometimes, it is amazing when business owners are their spokesperson. They have passion and are natural salespeople. Some business owners are terrible at speaking about their product.

When you have a business owner who is a natural promoter, they can drag listeners into their business. I once worked with a family who owned a couple of hardware stores. They spoke about the benefits of visiting their stores. It was heartfelt and real. They promised that their employees can help solve any problem in your home. If you went to that store and had a simple or complex problem, the employees helped you out.

I once worked with a man who owned a really nice flooring company.  For whatever reason, he thought that he was funny. He had spots written by him, his wife, or a kid. The ads were dreadful. They were not funny at all. Account Executives need to talk these clients out of doing commercials like this. Nothing says wacky hijinks like flooring.

Overuse of Numbers

“We have grapes at 99 cents a pound, Chuck steak at $1.99, two-for-one zucchini.”

Trust me, no one driving in city traffic can keep track of that. “The 2025 Chevy Chevette is back with 45-mpg efficiency and amazing 18-inch tires. Prices start at $19,999…  The New Chevy Silverado starts at $32,999.”

It gets really confusing fast.

WWW.

Yes, I hear commercials saying check us on the internet at “W-W-W dot business name here dot com.”

WWW is assumed and not needed anymore unless you are running a Commadore-64 with the latest floppy disc technology.

Yellow Pages Ad

“Check out our new ad in the Yellow Pages!”

OMG, no one reads those damn things anymore. Most people born after 1960 just toss those suckers in the trash. There was a time when the Yellow Pages were the largest revenue generator in advertising. Yes, a book of ads. Like Facebook, without your buddy’s political, vacation, or food posts. It was just ads. Zero content.

I had stuffed salmon tonight that I engineered myself. I would make Sydney Sweeney quite the trophy husband. Set us up. Hey, I am single. It was not that long ago that you would hear a radio ad that promoted a coupon in the Sunday paper.

Well, that copy should be deader than a doornail.

Amateur Theater

A husband and wife discussing their lawn and how she heard about Telly’s Lawn Service from her friend Stacy. 

Those commercials are obviously contrived and not interesting at all. 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Open every commercial must have an attention-grabbing opener. “Totally Jammed…  The floor covered with the guest towels. Fearing the horrific consequences of another flush…  I did the right thing. I called ABC Plumbing. Quick service, a great price, and peace of mind.”

The next time that the plunger is failing to get the desired results, the listener of that commercial will identify with the very realist scenario.

We are in the advertising business. Use radio as it was meant.

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The Lost Art of Using Sound as a Springboard

Use sound it wherever you can. All you need is a loyal, capable and willing board operator, to go along with a conscientious host.

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(Photo: Comedy Central)

Jon Stewart was the first guy to do it — take a politician’s words from the news of the day or week. Search his or her entire past and find a sound byte saying the exact opposite.

It became an art form – and a great way to keep people accountable.

Most radio operations don’t have the resources necessary to consistently do something like that, but truth be told, that kind of journalism isn’t really the point of this week’s column.

It’s an example of the simple power of sound. We need to use it more within our shows. Use sound it wherever you can. All you need is a loyal, capable, and willing board operator, to go along with a conscientious host.

Speaking from experience, not doing it is lazy.

Doing it takes minimal effort and helps conversations tremendously – especially when it’s in real-time. I know. I’ve been there – missing opportunity after opportunity because I didn’t think of it, ask for help or just do it myself.

Put simply, good sound is a better springboard to a question than just a question.

Just the other day, I realized how well it works and how little I’ve been doing it.

Here’s what happened.

We have one particularly heated congressional race in our state. The Republican candidate is running for a second time after narrowly losing in 2022 in an election where Connecticut’s gubernatorial candidate from the same party got smoked, and the Republican presidential candidate lost the state as well.

This time around, there’s a struggling Democratic President with real doubts about the economy and the country’s standing in the world.

Put simply, the Democratic congressional incumbent has a massive task ahead to get re-elected.

On my show, I try to be consistently independent and be a place for both parties to appear with the expectation that the conversations will be fair and honest.

The Republican candidate came on the show earlier this month, and we went through a number of issues. Connecticut is a relatively strong Democratic stronghold, where the party controls the legislature, the Governor’s Mansion, and the entire congressional delegation.

Having said that, the largest voting block is unaffiliated, so appealing to independents is crucial for either side to win. I asked the Republican candidate twice about whether he will support Donald Trump, and both times, he equivocated. I asked the follow-up, we were on the record, so I moved on.

The following week, his opponent, the Democratic incumbent, was scheduled to appear on the show. Before her arrival, I realized the Trump Q&A should probably be replayed for her. Duh.

My producer found it, clipped it, and had it at the ready. I felt that I should have realized it sooner and not put some added strain on my partner’s morning routine. He was fine, but it definitely added unnecessary work within the show.

Lesson learned.

The sound byte worked well. I played it. She responded. We moved the story forward, and it was compelling – as you might imagine, the topic of Trump vs. Biden is pretty compelling these days.

By no means did it create a “wow” moment. That would be a little much. But it did make the show better, using the opponent’s own voice as opposed to my paraphrasing something. That lends credibility, not only to the topic but also to the show. He gave this important answer on our show, and she gave her response … on our show.

My final thought on this is that we (I) need to look for more places to utilize sound as a springboard to conversations, as opposed to simply raising the topic and discussing it. Maybe you’re already good at it and do it all the time, but this past week, I realized I need to push myself to do it more.

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