...Rupert and Ailes got too cute by half. For years Faux was presented as the "alternative" to the "librul" media and gained popularity in the late Clinton years and into the dubya years. As long as the fire was directed at Democrats it was attractive to all stripes of right winger. They threw out just enough red meat but always at Democrats...the Raygun rule was strictly applied.

The election of President Obama changed things as Faux was in competition with hate radio to lead in the anti-Obama fear mongering. Faux helped launch the teabaggers who were supposed to be useful idiots in electing rushpublicans in 2010...but what Rupert & Co. didn't realize is they energized the libertarian/lunatic fringe that soon began to turn on the "RINOs"...or more specific, the party establishment that Faux serves. They helped create the bubble that burst on election night last year and their ratings have been in free fall ever since. In a strange twist of irony, their credibility among their reality-challenged viewers was breeched. Just head over to freeperland and see how angry many of those unhinged are at Faux.

Ailes in at a crossroads. Does he try to make the network "respectable" by getting rid of some of the most outrageous wingnuts that would further alienate the people he needs to bring back? Or does he try to create a new bubble?? Stay tuned...

MSNBC: 35% trust it, 44% don't

CNN: 38% trust it, 43% don't

PBS: 52% trust it, only 29% don't

Wow.



http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_National_206.pdf

I wish someone would.

Not a day goes by lately that Fox News does not itself make news. In the past few days, we’ve learned that the station dropped longtime commentator and pollster Dick Morris from its team of analysts. This comes after the decisions to renew the station’s lucrative contract with analyst Karl Rove and pass on the even more lucrative one with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R).

If these moves have a whiff of desperation about them, well, that’s appropriate. The station’s primetime ratings recently reached their lowest point in 12 years among viewers ages 25 to 54—who happen to be the only ones most advertisers care to reach. January was the worst showing ever for Fox’s “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren,” who viewers know as a close friend and confidante of Gov. Palin. On top of that, Fox News has hit a record low of trustworthiness among most Americans, according to a new survey by Public Policy Polling (the 2012 election’s most accurate pollsters).

Fox has never been a “news” network—to be considered a traditional “news” source, it would have to be unbiased, which is a quality that Fox clearly lacks. This became painfully evident to its viewers last election night. Not only was the network totally unprepared for the “shock” that everyone who took the polls and the math seriously had expected—that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) got creamed—but viewers were also privy to an on-air battle waged by analyst Karl Rove to try to prevent the station from telling its viewers the truth about the election results.

Rove, as perhaps most but not all viewers were aware, used Fox (and The Wall Street Journal) as an adjunct to his primary gig, which was the raising and distribution of literally tens of millions of dollars to Republican candidates in last year’s election through his super PACs. ... by calling Ohio—and therefore the election—for President Barack Obama, Fox was threatening Rove’s investments in the Senate candidates he and his cronies had funded. Many voters do not bother to show up—or remain in line—to vote if they believe the presidential race has already been decided.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/media/news/2013/02/07/52148/pity-the-poor-folks-at-fox-news/

No one really feels any pity for FOX. It has run its fake "fair and balanced" pretense into the ground and is now suffering the consequences.

they fall the happier I will be. I love watching FOX self destruct. My in-laws will not be happy./ THey love fox. Other than that they are great people, unfortunately they have turned red over the past 20-30 years. Didn't like Carter, hated Clinton and how he tarnished the Presidency, and they are having to suffer through another four years of Obama. Oh well, my wife and i are happy that the Reps lost and lost big on election night. Now if we could just get our state back for the crazy republicans......

both are in the process of trying to re-brand themselves. Problem is both could try and put on a different face. New and improved. But basically they might look or sound different - but they are the same at the core in ideology. They have lost all credibility and no matter what they do - they are screwed.

Think about the Cantor speech the other day. It was totally lifted from an Obama speech.

Now there's an opportunity for the other cable news networks. Play both speeches side by side. Illustrate their desperation.

a destroyed global economy, and Faux constantly telling everybody Romney was going to win and then not doing so for the majority of people in America to finally get a freakin' clue.

Americans: not the brightest people ever.

Fox (R) does not need a freaking cosmetic makeover. It needs to abandon the degenerate, hypocritical, lie-besotted "Republican Family Values," and instead embrace regular old American values like honesty, charity, courage, and tolerance.

That would lift them -- and other Republicans -- up out of the moral cesspool they have dug for themselves. I mean, what thinking human being would swallow the horseshit they shovel as 'Fair and Balanced" for very long.

It is a formula for massive FAIL. And now Fox is facing it. Deservedly so.

This week Karl Rove and his allies at the American Crossroads super PAC launched the "Conservative Victory Project," a group that plans to support more traditional Republican candidates in an effort to end the streak of undisciplined Tea Party hopefuls who blew Republican-leaning races with controversial campaign comments. (Think: Todd Atkin.)

Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Eric Canton (R-Va) just launched an effort to rebrand brand the Republican Party and broaden its appeal by softening the harsh rhetoric and, theoretically, seeking common ground. That kind of bipartisan, bridge-building rhetoric is precisely what the Tea Party labels as conservative heresy.

The right-wing blowback, especially to the fight Rove so publicly picked, was immediate and unfiltered: Rush Limbaugh complained two mighty forces were now targeting the Tea Party: Democrats and Republicans, led by elites like Rove.

With shots now being fired, guess who's stuck in the middle of the GOP's fight? Fox News.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/02/07/as-gop-splits-whose-side-is-fox-news-on/192566