Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

A couple of days ago Stacy McCain put up a post about CNN’s demographic numbers that have reached historically small levels:

The cable news network logged its worst weekend ratings on record in the all important 25- to 54-year-old demo, according to the latest Nielsen data released Tuesday.
CNN — which launched in 1980 and bills itself as “the most trusted name in news” — totaled just 55,000 viewers for its weekend slate of shows that include Sunday political programs “State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash,” and “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”

But the real news is here:

CNN’s overall viewership wasn’t much better. The network logged 345,000 total viewers, trailing Fox News’ 683,000 and MSNBC’s 424,000.

That’s a tiny amount of viewers, Fox is pulling in nearly double and even MSNBC is doing 20% better than “The most trusted name in news”.

But let’s look at the real story here.

Ok for those who have gone to public school and don’t handle math”

CNN’s 345,000 +

MSNBC’s 424,000 +

Fox’s 683,000

= 1,462,000 Human beings watching these three networks.

Just a reminder the total number of votes cast in the last election for president was 158,000,000.

Even assuming that a million or two of those ballots were created on the night of the election in key democrat districts that would leave 156,000,000 voters.

Simple math tells us that all three networks combined total viewership vs the actual number of voters (subtracting two million for fraud) is 0.9% of the electorate.

And that’s assuming of course that 100% of those viewing those networks are registered voters.

So YES CNN is the runt of the litter, but they’re the runt of a litter of mice.

So given these facts let’s ask a very basic question:

Can anyone tell me why we care one bit about a bunch of people on cable networks say when they aren’t even speaking to 1% of the voting population?