Numbers games – closing and opening up
Thursday, March 6, 2008
SO IT WAS RAZOR-THIN for Hillary Clinton in Texas, and quite a bit thicker in the often bellwether state of Ohio. And as commentators in print, on air and online agree pretty universally, the mathematics get intense from now on.
That applies probably not so much to the contest for primary electors, though the campaigns and the media won’t let up on giving them their sharpest attention. But ultimately, as the former First Lady knows probably better than anyone, what’s more important is the decidedly insider business of strong-arming support from among the Democratic Party’s unfortunately labeled “super-delegates”.
Such a struggle, played out on the phone and in rooms that would have (during less health-conscious times) been smoke-filled, will not be so conducive to the melodrama that TV's coverage can breathlessly conjure from the stats torrent that primaries and caucuses offer. But we can still turn to a different set of numbers that will reward our rapt attention.
For this 2008 electoral season’s other intense mathematics concern television itself. Notably, they highlight the remarkable increase in viewership that CNN has achieved, a viewership that’s even prepared to put up with the network’s continual and ludicrous boast of fielding "the best political team on television".
That’s not to be confused, naturally, with Fox News - they of "the best political team ever”, or even with CBS News’ old white guys whom Katie Couric called “the best in the galaxy”. (Let’s stop here, shall we? … without even stepping in to The Daily Show’s rightfully merciless take on all this, or Jon Stewart importing his show's ridicule to CNN’s own studio, claiming he was forced to use their stupid slogan at least “seven times a minute” while on The Larry King Show.
But for all their tooting of their own horn, Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper and the gang have in actual fact managed to reverse the trend that previously (for several years now) had their 24-hour cable news service falling in the ratings embarrassingly below Rupert Murdoch’s cynical non-apology for a “news” channel.
IT'S BEEN QUITE ENCOURAGING to see Ted Turner’s 28 year-old invention gaining ground again since early 2007 (helped by a multifaceted promotional strategy from network president Jim Walton, involving some crude sales-oriented measures that haven’t, frankly, sat well with straight news presentation) but it’s just been since the turn of this year that CNN has now dramatically won the day, with its pounding insistence on thorough-going primary coverage.
Iowa on January 3rd marked the turnaround, and CNN then overtook Fox in the all-important demographic (to advertisers) of 25-54 year old prime-time viewers, reaching 750,000 by the end of February, compared with Fox’s 550,000 (Graph above right shows Nielsen ratings).
I was just in Atlanta, CNN’s birthplace, and while there wasn’t exactly jubilation in the streets, a lot of TV people were smiling broadly.
It's had it's down and ups, this outfit that once - a very long time ago - colleagues and I derided as an upstart "Chicken Noodle Network" ... and then not so much later came to admire considerably.
It's nice to be able to applaud its success again.
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AS THE YEAR TURNED FOR ME AND THIS COLUMN, I WAS REMARKING on the degree to which election processes will dominate the international landscape in 2008.
I know it’s hard, when America’s own story is looking so compelling (and so important for the world, too, of course), but I hope the US media don’t let slip too much on the proper attention that’s due to other countries’ votes.
The relative skimpiness devoted in our major outlets to vital democratic contests like Pakistan and Kenya (even given the post-electoral massacres in the latter country) was not encouraging. And is Russia so easily dismissed as just a case of business-as-usual now that Vlamimir Putin’s hand-picked successor Dmitri Medvedev – so gamefully mispronounced by Senator Clinton when poked by NBC's tiresome Tim Russert – has been “voted” in?
We need to know what’s really happening in ZIMBABWE (March 29, when a probably manipulated result bringing “victory” again for the dictator Robert Mugabe could strike a match in that disastrous tinderbox of a country … in IRAN (March 14, when mullahs will limit popular choice for legislature candidates, but the results may still carry omens for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s survival in next year’s presidential vote) … and in TAIWAN (March 22, when a popular boost for the ruling independence-minded party, and its presidential candidate Frank Hsieh, could be taken as highly provocative by an angry mainland China).