Oh, Really, O'Reilly? Bill's Ratings Howler

Bill O'Reilly thinks he knows why everyone gangs up Fox News: because it's so darn successful.

From his syndicated column:

The enormous success of the Fox News Channel has created a bitterness unprecedented in the American press. CNN has been dethroned as the cable news leader and NBC News, which runs two cable outlets, is far behind both Fox News and CNN in the ratings.

There is so very, very much to dispute here -- starting with the fact that Fox is primarily hated not for succeeding, but because it made its name by attacking the "liberal media" -- but let's take the easiest part first: O'Reilly's claim that NBC operates two cable news channels that lag Fox and CNN in the ratings.

In a sense, that's true. But in another, more accurate sense, one of those two channels is CNBC, which, as an all-business channel, has a totally different, niche-based business model, commanding a much higher ad rate per thousand viewers. The appropriate ratings comparison for CNBC isn't Fox News but Fox Business Network, which, as recently noted, has so far drawn 1/47th the audience of CNBC.

By the way, the New York Post -- owned, like Fox News and Fox Business, by Rupert Murdoch -- altered the wording of O'Reilly's column to make it even more misleading. In the Post, the passage above reads "CNN has been dethroned as the cable-news leader, and NBC's two cable outlets are far behind both Fox and CNN in the ratings."