Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Apples and Oranges:Kos Kids

Just two days, at Redstate a popular diary was published. It related NBC's decision to move Olberman's show to the broadcast network. It lead into the Sunday Night Football. I can only assume that NBC was looking to boost Olbermann's fan base. Well the ratings are in and Olbermann hit a "whopping" 4.1 million viewers. Just for reference, American Idol is disappointed by less than 30 million.

Well, it turns out the daily kos think this is impressive. In fact, it is so impressive because Olbermann beat O'Reilly's audience share in his previous broadcast. O'Reilly hit 2.1 million households. In fact, O'Reilly averages 2.1 million households or thereabouts per night.

This diarist apparently is saying with a straight face that Olbermann really did beat O'Reilly. Let's lay out the facts folks. First, Olbermann was leading into Sunday Night Football, and just to restate the obvious, Olbermann was being shown on the broadcast NBC network, not on cable. O'Reilly's show is of course on cable, and the obvious difference is that one has to pay a monthly fee in order to watch O'Reilly, whereas this particular Olbermann program could be seen by anyone with a television. I won't even go into the fact that Olbermann was leading into the much more popular Sunday Night Football whereas as O'Reilly leads into Hannity and Colmes.
Despite, what is an obvious and blatant distortion of the facts, I couldn't find even one response that stated the obvious. In fact, the responses went something like this,

"Suck on that Bill O,It will be interesting to see if the NBC gig boosts Keith's
MSNBC airings.
In the meantime...Yee F*ing Haw"
"Everyone needs to track
this to the front pages, I have been tracking the ratings myself and Olberman is
a breath of fresh air. If he demonstrates the continuing success he has, the
other networks will be racing to find their next Olberman to gain the
bucks.
Nice Job KingOneEye!!!"
here is one thick with irony,

"no matter what! I think it won't be long before he'll blow O'Reilly out of the
water from MSNBC. There's just so much of the vile spew any human can take. Just
by word of mouth, and the blogs, alone Keith's audience will continue to
grow.
You are absolutely right! Keith is a refreshing breath of air after all
the other crap we've been fed for the last six years. He really tells it like it
is. It is nice to hear truth based on facts for a change, instead of a constant
diet of propaganda and spin."

please note that currently Olbermann struggles to be second or third and averages roughly 600,000 viewers, or less than a third of O'Reilly's.

Apparently, in the world of the Daily Kos, one can compare a show, leading into Sunday Night Football no less, on the broadcast network to another show on cable and take the raw numbers at face value.

As was chronicled in the first diary, the backlash of putting someone so clearly biased to one side on the broadcast network will more than outweigh whatever boost in ratings NBC thinks this will give him. That won't stop Daily Kos from spinning this as some sort of victory for Olbermann.

Finally, you had to dig, but the truth did actually come out in the Daily Kos article...

"Olbermann, not surprisingly, benefited from this. The early results show him
with 4.1 million viewers. That only earned him a third place finish, behind "60
Minutes" and "America's Funniest Videos," but it was good enough to quadruple
his average MSNBC audience. What's more, (and this has to hurt) it is twice what
Bill O'Reilly does on an average night. And this despite having been preempted
in some fairly significant markets (i.e. Philadelphia, Baltimore) which could
adversely impact Countdown’s numbers."

That's right, folks, in an apples to apples comparison, Olbermann brought up the rear as usual. Nice coup!!! Kos Kids, I would hope that anyone ratings are better when put on broadcast when compared to cable since, you know, more people have access to broadcast.

Finally,
for some sanity, check out the message boards for NBC Sports. They are unanimous. Keep Keith on cable. We don't want left wing propaganda with our football. Hmm, where else did I hear that, I think it was here...

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