....and deservedly so!
As a classical conservative and former broadcaster, I am always highly amused when I hear the extreme right wing commentators who proudly claim and boast of their ratings dominance throughout the spectrum of modern media. The structural core of their argument is that the “ratings” reflect the mood of America.
Unfortunately, those who are incapable of thinking for themselves and rely on these outlets for their political information, and who kneel in complete supplication at their altars, do so at their own peril. But,then again, there is no known cure for willful ignorance.
Success in the Nielsen ratings has no correlation to public opinion polling. The ratings only measure the program choices of Nielsen’s survey participants that are a subset of the population at large and there is absolutely no evidence that it is a defined or particularly representative matrix of the population. It is a sample focused on consumers, not voters. And its respondents are those willing to have their TV viewing monitored 24 hours a day, which automatically skews the sample in favor of people who aren’t concerned about being monitored by a corporation in which there will never be any personal interaction.
One should never conclude that viewing choices are necessarily an endorsement of the opinions presented in the program. There are many reasons people choose to watch TV shows, the most frequent being its alleged “entertainment value”.
So, any attempt to tie ratings to partisan politics is a foolish exercise that demonstrates a grievous misunderstanding of the business of television and radio, and does not speak well of the intellectual level of the “modern conservative” movement.
This last national election proved that most ordinary people are not as susceptible to hysterical fear-mongering that pollutes our air waves.
The failure of the “modern conservative movement” to present a reasoned, sober-minded critique of the issues that now confront the American people has been soundly rejected because our tone and tenor was far too harsh, far too strident, and accomplished nothing.
We got our asses kicked, and deservedly so!