4 ms·
They appeal to the 'mainstream audience', not techies or even the smarter half of the population.
by nawitus 13y ago
They appeal to the 'mainstream audience', not techies or even the smarter half of the population.
- dkarl 13y agoI would guess that half their viewership is in the smarter half. Remember that many people don't watch the news at all. I'll just leave you with that depressing reminder and go back to trying to have hope for the world.
- lmm 13y agoMany smart people, or at least HN types, prefer not to watch the news. (And FWIW as much as we love to complain about the newspapers I find TV news, even on the BBC, is the worst form of news reporting out there)
- chill1 13y agoI've found that watching almost any form of news -- in the United States -- is a complete waste of time, and even a hinderince to my own personal happiness.
- kunai 13y ago(Warning, this will sound extremely elitist.) I'd argue that the "smart" portion of the population is even less than you figure. It depends on what you interpret to be smart. With my own personal judgment, intelligence, true intelligence, is derived from skepticism, curiosity, and a thirst for knowledge, not by success financially. If we use those criteria, I'd say that most people in that list would be about 1/8th down on the bell curve. People just don't care, I've seen it with my own family.
- VLM 13y agoNot true at all. Look up the actual viewing figures. Less than 1% of the population watches CNN's morning news show. They most intentionally do NOT broadcast to the 'mainstream audience'. Careers are made and broken by appealing to perhaps 1% of the population (or 0.5%...) rather than the current 0.9% or so. Its a mix of HN elitism combined with gross over estimation of cultural impact WRT a cultural icon that doesn't matter anymore. They do not broadcast to the mainstream, they try to steal away fractions of a percent of weirdo daytime news network junkies from other networks, not boost viewership from the 99% of "normal" people who don't watch that kind of thing. Its like top40 music or hollywood movies in that way.
- nawitus 13y agoYou seem to confuse sample size with sampling error. Sure, only 1% (or whatever) of the population watches CNN. That doesn't mean the 1% watching the channel is not an average, mainstream viewer. It can actually be that the average CNN viewer is exactly like the average person in United States. I don't think that's true, but I don't think the typical viewer is that far from the average.
- VLM 13y agoI find that incredibly unlikely. I agree that the very small number of people who watch "sy fy" channel could be a perfect cross section of humanity, but that's not likely. The appeal level is extremely low (99% of the population would rather do anything else) and the barrier to entry is extremely low (its marginal cost is "free" if you have cable and a tv, and how hard is it to turn on a TV?) and the marketing is extensive (who in the USA has never heard of CNN before?) The content is highly formulaic and repetitive, typical characteristics of things that only appeal to a small minority. There are numerous business scenarios I can think of where a perfectly mainstream biz model fails because of problems with at least one of the above, but CNN and daytime news networks in general have no such excuse, they're just not mainstream anymore than sy fy channel or tennis channel is mainstream.