Talking Heads

The Drudge Report regularly lists the ratings for cable news shows. It's interesting to see who's the most popular and it's almost always the shows on Fox News. Here's the list from January 4:

CABLE NEWS RACE
THURS, JAN 4, 2007
VIEWERS

FOXNEWS O'REILLY 2,505,000
FNC HANNITY/COLMES 1,802,000
FNC SHEP SMITH 1,374,000
FNC HUME 1,258,000
FNC GRETA 1,194,000
CNN KING 1,014,000
CNN COOPER 835,000
CNN DOBBS 814,000
CNNHN GRACE 676,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 665,000
MSNBC SCARBOROUGH 648,000
CNN ZAHN 643,000
CNNHN BECK 467,000
MSNBC MATTHEWS 424,000

This is pretty standard with all of Fox's shows beating CNN's best, Larry King, and MSNBC barely registering on the Richter scale. My personal favorite is Brit Hume's show, which is almost all politics and current events and no missing teenagers or murder trials of the century (that's Greta Van Susteren's bailiwick).

My personal opinion is that Fox is more balanced (dare I say, "Fair and Balanced?") than the others. Bill O'Reilly is a traditional Libertarian, Hannity is a conservative Republican, and Combs is flaming liberal Democrat. And that's just Fox's top two shows. Smith and Hume seem pretty conservative but Van Susteren is not, and neither are many of the regular guests on these shows. And many of the conservatives are not social conservatives, but rather political or financial conservatives – and there is a difference.

I suppose that for those who are used to a liberal slant to the news, the middle of the road might seem a little extreme. But if you actually watch Fox News, you realize that there is quite a bit of diversity when everyone is NOT marching in liberal lock-step.

And audiences like that.