Steve M. catches some amazing Cain-fluffing over at Fox.
Any chance Cain ever had to win the Republican primary ended with that disastrous news conference. Everyone knows that.
In a similar vein, James Wolcott has the story of Fox Business News’ brilliant string of success:
In its target 25-54 demo, though, Fox Business only drew an average of 10,000 viewers per day. This, compared to the network’s chief competitor, CNBC, which saw around 201,000 viewers on average and 59,000 in the 25-54 age group.
A few years ago, it was assumed that things would turn out very differently:
The general feeling is that Fox will crush CNBC,” one pessimistic CNBC staffer told NYTV. “Politics aside, Ailes is worshiped. The leadership here is in total denial.”
Maybe Rupert’s reign of terror really is coming to an end.
Zifnab
He’s a billionaire with an otherwise-highly-successful media empire. He and his heirs will have plenty of opportunities to keep fucking that chicken.
trollhattan
Can’t allow myself to be that optimistic, I’m afraid. To my knowledge Fox remains the “news” network that’s not required to turn a profit so I presume they’ll keep shoveling dollars into the boilers so the network can keep shoveling out the party-line shite to their viewers. It’s all that matters.
In other, future election news, the California Republican party is looking for a billionaire, any billionaire, to run against Feinstein. If you know one, have them call (916-448-9496). Karl would really like to take this one.
http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/11/07/2606269/nunes-had-too-much-to-lose-by.html
Villago Delenda Est
@Zifnab:
It’s merely a setback.
me
News Corp is probably just waiting until the day the WSJ-CNBC contract expires. I know some say the WSJ won’t sign up with FBN but does anyone really think that Rupert will allow one part of his company to not help a another failing part. Hell, they might even rename the channel the “Wall Street Journal Network”.
Villago Delenda Est
@me:
I think that’s a distinct possibility.
Branding is just about everything in a substance free market like bidness nooze.
Certified Mutant Enemy
To put things into perspective: A typical rerun of SpongeBob SquarePants has more viewers than the highest rated Fox “News” program.
Special Patrol Group
One pessimistic CNBC staffer is a fucking dildo.
Steve
I remember when Fox Business launched, claiming they were going to be the real free-market business network, not a bunch of commies like you find over on CNBC. Needless to say, not even the wingnuttiest members of CNBC’s viewership are likely to say, “Gee, this network is just too left-wing for me.” So it’s unsurprising that they failed to fill a niche that doesn’t exist.
MikeJ
@Certified Mutant Enemy: And more intelligent viewers at that.
Probably equal on crying, incoherent screaming, and shitting their pants.
ruemara
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
Spongebob Squarepants has a better grasp of the issues.
Violet
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
And yet no one is watching SpongeBob when I’m at the gym, and there are plenty of TVs set to Fox News or FBC.
reflectionephemeral
It took me years to hear that line correctly. I used to play “Jail Guitar Doors” at my HS radio station before I realized. Happily, no one else seemed to notice, either.
As to Fox Business, I think Steve has it right– the network of Larry Kudlow was gonna be hard to portray as left-wing. Doesn’t mean it was impossible, but it was a tough road.
MikeJ
Normally when people write things like “everybody knows that” I cringe, because that will be the pull quote when things go pear shaped (savor it!).
However, having Cain be the nominee instead of Romney would be great news, so perhaps you’re right to tempt fate.
Comrade Javamanphil
FTFY.
Steve M.
The difference is, CNBC viewers want mostly apolitical answers to basic questions: What should I invest in? What should I sell? What will get me rich quick? The message of Fox News (and thus, I assume, of Fox Business) is that as long as Democrats and liberals have any power whatsoever, we live in a socialist hellhole in which we’re all doomed to serfdom, whereas when the Randian utopia arrives everything will go up in price every day forever. To the typical business-news consumer, that’s not helpful; to the typical Fox News viewer, that message is presented much more entertainingly on Fox News.
(And thanks for the link….)
PeakVT
@Zifnab: His heirs will probably fuck the empire instead, once Rupert is gone. There will be a very public, dirty brawl between his current wife and his older kids that will distract them from actually running the business. At least that’s what I’m hoping for.
Lurking Canadian
It has been known for many years that you can fool all of the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
Fox sure did give it an honest try, though.
Linda Featheringill
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
Hey. SpongeBob does some interesting stuff. :-)
JGabriel
OT. John Quiggan, Aussie economist and Crooked Timber blogger, has a good essay in the NY Times today on the collapse of the Euro (via K-Thug):
Shorter ECB: We must destroy the Euro in order to save it (from inflation)!
There’s not much in it that would be new to anyone regularly reading Quiggan at Crooked Timber or Krugman’s blog, but it’s good summary of the situation and how the ECB got there.
.
Villago Delenda Est
The thing is, Cain pressed the right buttons for the wingtards in that conference.
The fact that rational, thinking people think he’s a trainwreck makes Cain MORE attractive to the wingnuts, if they can just get over the blonde white woman thing…
Bill E Pilgrim
@Villago Delenda Est: I hope Karen Kraushaar succeeds in getting all of them together at a press conference, that would be too good for words. It would be like Robert Palmer’s band suddenly turning and attacking him, albeit a blonder and somewhat more mature and intelligent-looking version.
Somehow the way she stayed out of the spotlight for as long as she could, but once others outed her, sort of rolled up her sleeves and said “Right. Okay then, in that case….” was the most impressive performance by anyone yet in this whole thing.
Downpuppy
Cain shifting to blaming the Democrat Machine instead of more likely suspects goes along with Fox fluffing.
Now that they all know he’s toast as a candidate, it’s right back into the chorus line.
cathyx
@Violet: That’s because it’s better to watch Spongebob in your jammies.
Villago Delenda Est
@JGabriel:
German hyperinflation of 90 years ago is driving the train on this…and the disaster that followed it…fascism, a world war that Germany lost in the most decisive way possible, utter and complete defeat with their enemies’ armies occupying their entire country…then the eternal shame of what was done in their name to vast populations.
The Germans think that inflation set all that up.
They don’t want to ever risk going there again…and are so obsessed with the outcome they believe that hyperinflation set up that they don’t realize that they’re playing with the same fire.
Rome Again
They had better be running a serous amount of Cheetos ads or otherwise it’s not going to be anywhere near profitable.
Formulation for sales ads usually assumes 5% of those given the suggestion to purchase any product will actually do so. They need a product nearly all of their viewers use or else they’re toast!
Bill E Pilgrim
@cathyx:
We used to bob for sponges in our jammies every Halloween.
kth
Actually kind of sad about Fox Biz, as it’s impossible to be more evil than CNBC, and if they managed to be equally evil, at least there would be competition. Though it’s amusing that they thought there is room to the right of Larry Kudlow and Maria Bartiromo.
Rome Again
@Villago Delenda Est:
Good news! Go Herman, all the way to Tampa and beyond! :P
The Dangerman
@Steve:
There may be a niche, but that demographic wants information, not propagandistic horseshit. We’re talking Money here; it talks, bullshit walks.
RosiesDad
@kth: Don’t know that Fox Biz is more evil than CNBC but I have watched it a little and it sucks. Just unwatchable. Would rather watch livestock auctions on RFD-TV.
FormerSwingVoter
@JGabriel:
In fairness to the ECB, their only mandate is to control inflation. Stability of the euro currency itself or the economy of the eurozone as a whole is explicitly not in their charter.
Not that that’s stopped any competent central bank from fulfilling the “lender of last resort” role in the past, but it’s worth pointing out that the EU could have prevented this issue in the first place by telling the ECB to do their most obvious job when it was first formed.
MikeJ
OT, but isn’t the soçialist grab of the airwaves (as described by Beck) scheduled for 11am?
JGabriel
@Villago Delenda Est:
Maybe. It’s a nice story. Color me skeptical, though.
The truth is that the ECB’s actions (and lack thereof) line up a little too closely with the interests of the rentier class, and while German concerns may dominate at the ECB, the Germans don’t run it all on their lonesome.
.
Napoleon
@Villago Delenda Est:
That is a myth. By the time the fascists arose in Germany inflation had been tamed.
JGabriel
@FormerSwingVoter:
I’m not sure that’s true. The Fed also has a dual mandate, inflation and jobs, yet they’ve done damn little on the jobs front. I don’t see any reason to think the ECB would have behaved differently even if the charter explicitly spelled out its “lender of last resort” role.
.
Davis X. Machina
The Inquisition took a similar tack with reference to souls, and heresy.
Sometimes the mutatis don’t mutandīs much.
RalfW
For some reason that I’m certainly not going to complain about, Comcast Minneapolis has FauxBiz as a higher-level subscription than CNBC.
So I couldn’t watch even if I wanted. Which I sure as f*k don’t, even as I reside in the 25-54 demo.
Hah.
Enlightened Liberal
I do consulting for hedge funds in NYC, so I’ve been in about 100 trading areas (conservatively) and not once have seen FBN turned on. Even my clients in the News Corp building watch CNBC or Bloomberg instead.
Villago Delenda Est
@Napoleon:
Ah, but the memory of the hyperinflation, only a decade before, was fresh in the minds of the Germans as a healthy fraction of them voted for the Nazis. It set up the conditions in their minds for the cascade of disasters that followed.
Recall also that the German people were NOT enthusiastic about the invasion of Poland, or the war with France and England. The Nazis didn’t want anyone to think that these successes were leading up to some long protracted total war…they deliberately did not take steps to fully mobilize German industry for the war effort until after Stalingrad, because the last thing they wanted to do was remind the people of the “total war” that resulted in so much suffering 30 years earlier.
Memories are long…and subject to distortion.
This is all about perception. Most people don’t have the detailed knowledge to be able to sort out the reality.
@JGabriel:
While I don’t put anything past the vampires that are the rentiers, they use the media to hint of the dangers of inflation, of people of those terrible times of hauling around a wheelbarrow full of paper currency to buy a loaf of bread. Because if you did this in the morning, by the next day you’d need a second wheelbarrow.
That gives them some popular support for their actions, and they need that to pull the con.
Krugman called this one…a central bank without the full mandate of a central bank was asking for trouble…but I suppose it was the best that could be done given the political situation at the time it was formed. Now that’s coming back to bite them in the ass.
RalfW
Argh! Soshulists are ruining my TeeVee ad for some low budget crap involving old people, paper plates, and an exercise ball.
The dreaded first-ever, Obama-Stalin federal emergency alert synchronized nationwide broadcast just happened. Right over an incomprehensible commercial that looks like it was shot on a betamax with one $300, 80’s era camera.
And I … I … SURVIVED!
c u n d gulag
It’s amazing that anyone watches FOX business at all.
Sure, FOX Spews depends on morons to watch their “news.”
But people who are investing money don’t want bullshit, fiction, and spin, but actual data and fact.
Can you imagine depending on listening to that channels moronic equivalents of Bill Orally or Uni-brow Hannity for how to increase your money and investments?
Davis X. Machina
@c u n d gulag:
Investors’ Business Daily has a channel now?
scav
May be strange things lurking and swirling in the NI/NC empire
Nov 9, 2011 Murdoch’s Aussie boss steps down
Nov 6, 2011 The question James Murdoch can’t answer: will his father’s empire survive?, which tends personally sympathetic but nicely sets up the issues facing fils tomorrow (although there have been developments even since the 6th).
Bill E Pilgrim
@Enlightened Liberal: Okay that’s interesting.
Anecdotal but would tend to bolster the idea that when money’s actually on the line, people want information and recognize that FOX won’t give it to them even if they work there.
Money talks, etc., as someone already said. Berlusconi for example, people were happy to put up with the clown show as long as he brought in money to the right people, once that stopped working, it’s time to shoot him out of a cannon and arrivederci.
Edit: After typing that last word I saved and noted that there’s a new post up titled “arrivederci” which I’m assuming is about him also, and I shall now go see.
Chris T.
@The Dangerman: There’s a lot of non-information and bad information on CNBC too though. It’s just … less bad and BS-y than FBN, on the whole. (Maybe. I never actually watch FBN, so while I do let CNBC run in the background a lot, I can’t really compare other than the occasional FBN snippet on the web.)
c u n d gulag
@Davis X. Machina:
LOL!
Point well taken!
Steve M.
You want Cain fluffing (or at least Bialek trashing)? Check out Fox Nation right now:
gnomedad
@Villago Delenda Est:
‘Tis but a scratch.
catclub
@Villago Delenda Est: Hyperinflation was in 1923. 47% unemployment and Hitler came in 1933. Why the hell do they focus on the hyperinflation rather than the unemployment?
Perhaps because the people who ‘suffered’ the most in 1923, as their precious, precious Reichsmarks evaporated, were rich plutocrats, who run the media there just like they run it here? Unemployment in 1933 was just ‘the recent unpleasantness’? Not a problem for them. Likewise they were not the cannon fodder for Hitler’s armies. They were making money building ovens and tanks. (Bush’s Grandfather helped them.)
Calouste
@Steve M.:
Of course there is the minor issue that Cain said that he never met her.
Frankensteinbeck
C u n d gulag:
You would think, but rich people are no smarter than the rest of us. The vast majority were born wealthy and coasted on the opportunities spoon fed to them. They have no more reason to demand real information or make correctly calculated decisions than anyone else. Maybe less – they’re much less likely to suffer disaster for a screw up.
Villago Delenda Est
@catclub:
Because focusing on inflation is part of the con.
Note that Hitler used government spending (!) to address the unemployment problem…massive government works (autobahns, anyone?), military buildup (always good for stimulating the economy), and lots of kitsch put together by slave laborers in KZs (all just lazy soshulists and communists anyways) that made the SS fabulously rich…through labor theft.
The hyperinflation did affect everyone, not just the plutocrats (all those slipped disks from pushing wheelbarrows of marks around) but the rentiers are the most frightened of inflation, because it fucks up their game.
They run the banks.
c u n d gulag
@Frankensteinbeck:
Fair point.
All I know is, as volatile as investing money can be nowadays, I’d want real, real-time information, not what someone wants me to think, like they do with the FOX News.
And sure, propaganda sells.
I just don’t think it’s smart to buy it if you want to make money.
You make your money selling propaganda, not buying it.
...now I try to be amused
Gets thrown out trying to score, more like. (*rimshot*)
Yep. Fox “News” is the Washington Times of TV.
Svensker
@Steve M.:
My God, I’ve never been to FN before. The spin is simply incredible. All propaganda all the time. Gah.
GregB
Fox News was once called a festival of ignorance by a wise guy comic who made it on to one of their foolish shows.
It was the most intelligent thing ever said on that modern day Triumph of the Swill network.
patrick II
Business news isn’t political news — the results of believing it are more personal, immediate, and have real financial consequences. Fox Business ratings are down because anyone following the advice of Fox Business has lost his television in his bankruptcy sale.
Steve
@c u n d gulag:
Right, like the cold hard data you get from Jim Cramer. Let’s not overrate the brilliant analytical mind of the trader; they live in a manufactured reality as much as anyone else does.
Nemesis
Funny story about fox entertainment and young viewers…
due to my intensity over politics, my 21 y/o son avoids politics completely (I screwed up).
But even my son was aware of fox’ recent screwup where they placed Lybia in the Middle East. My son, a Geology major, found that wildly hilarious.
schlemizel
@RalfW:
Thats odd because I thought I got them both with basic cable. But I would rather sit on a red hot poker than watch either of those two nightmares.
I haz a sad that nobody has talked about Mad Money here yet. Perhaps the worst show on TV – I’d watch the Kardasians before I’d tune in to that thing.
Paul in KY
@Bill E Pilgrim: That would make a great video.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: The real reason (IMO) was that the German people never knew they were getting whupped in WW I & were thus open to Hitler’s lie that the Jews had stabbed Germany in the back.
Will say that the hyperinflation of early 30s put severe strain on the German population & made them susceptible to charlatans such as Hitler & his band of sickos.
Paul in KY
@Rome Again: Today Tampa…Tomorrow, der World!
Walker
I wouldn’t call this good news for CNBC either. What you are saying is that the main demographic for CNBC are from people who are outside the time frame that they should be investing aggressively (as opposed to conservatively preserving what they have). Sounds like they both fail, just that Fox fails harder.
trollhattan
Holy cow, David Gregory said this?
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/11/david-gregory-didnt-mean-to-compare-gop-to-kkk.html
Enlightened Liberal
c u n d gulag
@Steve:
AS little as I know about finance, even I knew Cramer was a joke after watching him for awhile, and then looking at the results in the paper or the internet.
I mean, without really trusted resources, isn’t investing based on what stooges like Cramer, or most of the shitheads at CNBC, and especially FOX Business News, like wondering why your recipe turned out crappy because they told you to wait until your water boils at 170 degrees?
It is true, though, that if you listen to the pretty Kens & Barbies on TV, or their ugly counterparts who they put on to make it look like they have gravitas, and think they know what the fuck they’re talking about, then you deserve what you get.
Sadly, the government will cover these rich dopes losses.
Brachiator
Or not. Murdoch has a global empire. He was able to kill News of the World without batting an eyelash or incurring long term damage to his balance sheet, as a result of the phone hacking scandal.
If (very unlikely) UK authorities prevent Murdoch from taking over Sky TV entirely, then we might be talking about something.
Jethro Troll
“Well there is no, you know, grand wizard in the party right now who can really force the issue.”
At least, not since he was defeated by “Diaper Dave” Vitter in 1999.
Ruckus
James Wolcott from the linked article.
“And then there’s Eric Bolling, who, even for a Fox News personality, talks a surplus of ignorant smack. He reminds me of the kind of guy in college who’d flatten a beer can against his forehead after he finished it. That can take its intellectual toll.”
I always thought the faux news types had tried flattening full beer cans against their foreheads. That explained their stupidity and delusions to me.
joeshabadoo
@Enlightened Liberal:
I think this goes for most business outlets now.
Some of them have the occasional bit of useful information but most of them seem to have the dual purpose of screwing the rubes who don’t have the connections of knowledge to see what is really happening and fluffing the richest.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@RosiesDad:
The Big Joe Polka Show!