Fox News hemorrhaging?

Another great Realitique post citing numbers from Air America's Randi Rhodes:



I've found another source for this data, presumably derived from Nielsen ratings since that's what TVNewser seems to rely upon.

What happened between October and December of 2004 to precipitate the decline in Fox News viewers? Well, I for one would like to believe that people stopped watching Fox News because they recognize the pro-Bush administration slant. Or even better, maybe people are converting over to the progressive end of the political spectrum. Did Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed outfox Fox? Or were people turning instead to blogs for news?

It's probably more likely that fewer people were watching because the November election cycle ended. Bill O'Reilly's ratings, for example, hemorrhaged after the election, as did CNN's ratings, although slightly less than Fox's. To verify that, someone would have to see if there was an increase in viewers in the run up to the November election.

I'm not up to that anymore today. For readers who like this sort of thing, there's a great Journalism.org study with demographic charts of news viewership during the 2004 campaign season.