Fox On Top

The 2010 Pew report on the state of the news media.  Here are some bullet points from the 2009 cable news roundup.

• Financially, CNN and HLN remained static, not necessarily a bad thing given the challenges facing other media in 2009. Profits (up 1% to $475.5 million) and revenues (down 1% to $1.18 billion) were basically flat, as was overall news investment (down 2.5% to $703.4 million).
• By contrast, Fox achieved growth across nearly all key metrics. Its audiences were up by nearly a quarter in both prime time (2.13 million viewers) and daytime (1.2 million viewers). Its profits (up 19% to $534.8 million) and revenues (up 14% to $1.21 billion) grew substantially. The channel’s news investment was up 10% to $674 million.
• But as in audience, there were big differences among the channels. For the first time, Fox News was clearly on top.
• While all three cable news operations — CNN (whose finances are combined with HLN), Fox News, and MSNBC — were projected to increase their profits, at CNN and MSNBC the gains were a negligible 1%. Only Fox was projected to increase total revenues, and to do so substantially.
• Fox was projected to again outpace CNN in advertising revenue, but also to eclipse it for the first time in profit and in the average license fee per subscriber.
• Fox News was expected to lead not only in percentage growth, but also in total profit in 2009. There have been years when analysts erroneously projected that Fox would eclipse CNN/HLN’s profits. But the margin by which Fox is projected to exceed CNN/HLN this year is $59 million—the biggest it has ever been.
• In a year when many businesses had declining revenues, Fox News stood out for its strong growth. CNN and MSNBC remained basically flat, although that is still not such a bad thing in an environment where some media companies had great losses.
• In one key demographic — 25-to-54-year olds — CNN fell behind a more ideological MNSBC in prime time audience, a prospect unthinkable even two years earlier. For the first time in years, CNN also cut back on newsgathering, its primary competitive advantage over its rivals.

While cable news thrives, broadcast network news is Withering Heights.