Friday, August 30, 2013

Foxy Journalism

FOX has been changing its lineups since the 2012 debacle, cutting back on the self-promoters and the screamingly wrong. Karl Rove has become scarce and Dick Morris is on the Index. They have made several curious scheduling decisions as well, putting Cavuto opposite O'Reilly and, recently, taking the talking point Gattling Hannity off at 9:00 in favor of fecund Megyn Kelly. The inner workings of FOX are only a curiosity but the press coverage is not. Here is a syndicated Hannity-Kelly story as reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
"Piers Morgan is getting some competition in the form of Fox newswoman Megyn Kelly, E! News reports.
Kelly, who's on maternity leave from work, has landed her own 9 p.m. Fox News time slot, according to the Drudge Report. Kelly's show would replace Sean Hannity's current 9 p.m. gig and would air in direct competition with Morgan's CNN show "Piers Morgan Live."
So what's Morgan think about his new time-slot rival? "Bring it on @megynkelly," the 48-year-old Brit tweeted Thursday with a link to the Drudge Report's story.
Sounds like Morgan isn't too worried!
Kelly gave birth to baby boy Thatcher Bray on July 23. Thatcher is Kelly and husband Doug Brunt's third child together."

Now that looks like a pretty straight forward puff-piece; the Morgan-Hannity competition sounds viable and Morgan sounds like a legitimate contender to be reckoned with. Except neither is true. Here are stats from last month:
"Tuesday night Fox News’ Hannity was #1 in the 25-54 demo at 9pm, more than doubling its nearest competitor, MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show. Sean Harrity's show had 408K demo viewers to Rachel Maddow‘s 203K.
With CNN’s Piers Morgan drawing just 84K viewers in the demo, Hannity’s total topped MSNBC and CNN’s numbers combined at 9pm."

Morgan is clearly an insignificant competitor in that time slot. Why would the newspaper try to give the impression that he was more?

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