Introduction

Much had been written about growing political partisanship in the US and the reasons for it. Via the Internet, more information is available to all than ever before – probably good. But certainly Trump, the uncompromising party battles in Congress and Social” media have contributed to the warring factions in the US.

In addition, cable TV is contributing to the increasingly strident tones expressed by the American public. Conventional thinking has Fox News supporting Trump, Republicans and conservatives (none of these are the same) while MSNBC and CNN tilt the news towards the Democrats and “progressives.”

The following table provides 4PM to Midnight data for these three cable stations. The bottom line: Fox is the big winner. The counts in red are where the Fox total is greater than the CNN + MSNBC total. However, the total of CNN and MSNBC come close to matching Fox. In only one case does a CNN or MSNBC show top the Fox show – Williams beats Bream in the 11PM slot.

Total Viewers (in thousands)

Week of Oct. 15th

Source:

Observations

• One can speculate on the reasons for these results. We know that Fox listeners are older. For prime time viewers, the average age of Fox viewers is 66 with CNN and MSNBC viewers being 59 and 65, respectively.
• One study surveyed 3,092 Americans, aged 15 to 98. The conclusion: Adults over 65 reported spending three times more of their waking hours watching TV than did younger adults.
• The share of older people voting is higher than younger.