Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Fox Farts

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist


There has been some buzz in news circles this week regarding the age of viewers of various cable news channels.   It wasn’t overly surprising to learn that the old folks are more focused on Fox News than they are either MSNBC or CNN.

The median age of Fox viewers is, according to the folks at Nielsen, above sixty-five – where it has been for six of the past eight years.  (Nielsen doesn’t record ages by individual year once they slip past sixty-five – so it is unclear how far over the age of sixty-five Fox viewers tend to be.)  The median age of MSNBC viewers is 60.6 years, and the kids congregate at CNN where the median age is 59.8 years.

Not only do the old farts tend to congregate in front of the Fox newscasts, younger people seem to be leaving Fox.  The number of Fox viewers in the age range of 25-54 has decreased each of the past five years.

Fox News viewers are older than the folks who spend their time watching the Hallmark Channel, the Military Channel, and the Golf Channel.

One reason that so many old folks stick with Fox News might be that they are just too damned sedentary to get up and change the channel.  Another, of course, could be senility.

Sadly, at least for Fox, the hearses keep rolling and the funeral bells keep tolling.  Speaking from the vanguard of the baby-boomers who are just now beginning to turn sixty-five, we expect more from news than hate and decrepitude.  You are going to have to inform us, and we are smart enough to fact-check.

Hey Fox, the Republican Party isn’t the only thing overdue for a re-brand.   It will be fun to what you become in your next life.

2 comments:

Xobekim said...

Or arthritis, they can't push the buttons on the remote. Perhaps it is coarctation of the blood vessels feeding the brain. Then again, it could be that they like hearing that they are right and the rest of the world, which continues to grow and change in unimaginable directions, is in error. For them FOX has everything they need, except a funeral director.

Don said...

I live in The Villages, FL, which is the largest retirement community in the world. There are more than 100,000 of us here.

Not surprisingly, the developer of this city -- a billionaire named H. Gary Morse -- is the largest single contributor to the GOP in the state.

ALL GOP hopefuls for any major office are paraded through The Villages as part of their campaign.

Democrats are not allowed.

FOX News is the only TV station available in some of the retail establishments here.

More than 75 percent of residents are Republicans.

This is the last, strongest bastion of racism,intolerance and bigotry.

I live here because, for a variety of reasons, it'd be inconvenient to leave. But sometimes I long for an old-fashioned political debate. There's not much of that happening around here.