Communication Breakdown

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual State of the News Media report, "cable news viewership for CNN, MSNBC and Fox News fell substantially in 2010 -- 13.7 percent in aggregate for a sharper decline than any other sector. Broadcast news, which has experienced declining viewership for years, was down another 3.4 percent in 2010."

Looking at the breakdowns, MSNBC lost the least viewers and Fox lost the most, but people are tuning out overall. Clearly, the very serious pundits aren't reading the message correctly:

"What [the audience erosion] suggests is that we may have reached a peak in cable news viewership," says Amy S. Mitchell, Deputy Director for the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. "It's not that people are not watching cable, they're just not turning to news as much."

Wrong Amy. It's that "news" programs aren't delivering news anymore and the on-air, smug punditry has become simply insufferable for the most part. People are getting their news from the internet and you can bet a lot of them are turning to foreign outlets where the news is at least marginally more informative.

But this explains a lot about why the US establishment media is so useless:

...The PEJ study also found that revenue for almost every sector of the news media bounced back after a dismal year in 2009, when the financial crisis was still roiling the industry.

According to the study, "revenues for each of the cable news channels were projected to increase in 2010 a total of 10.7 percent across the three networks: Fox grew 17 percent to $1.5 billion, CNN and HLN 5 percent to $1.2 billion, and MSNBC was up 7 percent to $383 million."

Additionally, CNBC, which charges premium boasts affluent viewers command premium CPM (cost per thousand) rates, raked in an estimated $723 million in 2010, an increase of 9 percent year to year and nearly double what MSNBC pulled in.

Thnking... What was different about 2010? Couldn't be the influx of cash for trash ads thanks to Citizen United is influencing coverage, could it?