This is the way the right-wing media rolls these days, folks. If you don’t like the results of something, you say the figures were faked. Doesn’t matter if it’s an election or ratings on a TV show, If you can’t live with a result, just deny its reality.
You’ve already seen earlier this week all the efforts that the right-wing media made to disparage the January 6 Hearing, “don’t watch it, don’t watch it.” That may have had the reverse effect of getting people to watch it. That tends to be human nature, we all want to look at something we’re not supposed to see. In all events, something happened, because 20 million people tuned in, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Steve Bannon wants you to know that the ratings were rigged — just like the 2020 election. This is Big Lie 2.0. We’ll have to start numbering them now. Sigh.
Steve Bannon says the TV ratings for the J6 hearing were rigged. pic.twitter.com/cgvrj9Z4fA
— Ron Filipkowski ?? (@RonFilipkowski) June 10, 2022
Fox News chugged along with it’s usual three million viewers for that time slot. So people weren’t deserting Fox to watch the hearings, which makes sense. They kept their hard core audience. New York Times:
“It’s deranged, and we’re not playing along,” Mr. Carlson said of the hearings. “This is the only hour on an American news channel that will not be carrying their propaganda live. They are lying, and we are not going to help them do it. What we will do instead is to try to tell you the truth.”
Fox’s counterprogramming efforts drew an average audience of three million, which is just about normal.
The Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum did cover the hearings live but did so on Fox Business, which attracts far fewer viewers. Roughly 223,000 people watched the hearings on Fox Business. When Mr. Baier and Ms. MacCallum switched over to Fox News for a two-hour special at 11 p.m., an average of 1.3 million watched.
Local affiliates of the Fox broadcast network had the option of picking up the Fox Business feed but were not required to do so. Some major local Fox stations, like Los Angeles and Chicago, took the feed while others aired regularly scheduled entertainment programming. The Fox station in the New York market, for instance, elected to run episodes of “MasterChef Junior” and “Don’t Forget the Lyrics.”
Don’t forget the lyrics? In any event, it’s obvious that a lot of people watched the hearing. Not as many as watched the presidential debates, that figure was 63 million, but the 20 million is on par with a media event like Sunday Night Football. The finale of Game Of Thrones had a viewership of 18.6 million. And the audience well outdrew the Oscars performance, possibly the first time in history a congressional hearing has done that.
These people do not lose with grace. That hasn’t always been true. George H.W. Bush lost the election to Bill Clinton with grace. He was highly and widely praised for what was called his “Patrician” concession speech. It is doable. It has been done. Just not by this generation of infantile fools, who can’t lose a game fair and square without flipping over the board and setting fire to the table.
— banshee6romeo (@banshee6romeo) June 10, 2022
Look at the bright side…..in a couple of months Bannon will be forced to bathe at least once a week, and if he refuses, they will open up the fire hose on his sorry ass in his cell.
*smirk*
20 million old people like me and my wife who still watch network tv. Lots more stream it or watch highlights. That is a lot of people. I found it compelling to watch, I thought it would be boring, instead we watched all the way to the end.
And who-knows-how-many watching or otherwise following it online!
Bannon’s a one trick horse’s ass.
I’m sorry but does anyone pay attention to bannon? I guess I thought he went out with the contents of one’s toilet and was about as missed.