FNC is entertainment journalism—by direct or indirect admission of all its biggest stars at some point or another. So it's ranked first for 65 consecutive quarters among media outlets that televise entertainment journalism—among news networks it doesn't rank because it isn't one.
2/ I'm serious about this—Nielsen only ranks FNC among news networks because the brass at FNC have convinced Nielsen that that's what FNC is. In consequence, it gets to compete against news networks at a time when entertainment journalism is more popular than hard news reporting.
3/ Were FNC burdened with being a news network, it wouldn't fare nearly as well in the Nielsens and—compared to other networks—would be among the least popular. Instead, it gets to play in a sandbox it has no claim to—like a baby who wins a popularity contest at a nursing home.
4/ I have no problem saying FNC is a great entertainment journalism enterprise—it knows just what people want to see when they've turned off their brains to relax.
And I have no problem saying you don't get to have Nielsen rate you as a news network just because you claim to be.
And I have no problem saying you don't get to have Nielsen rate you as a news network just because you claim to be.
5/ Just so, PBS could interrupt Sesame Street daily for 2 minutes of real-life breaking news and it wouldn't let Oscar the Grouch compare his Nielsen numbers to Rachel Maddow's. So Shep Smith may have some game on occasion, but sorry, man, you're a 2-minute Sesame Street cut-in.
6/ To continue the analogy, Hannity no more gets to claim he has a show on America's number-one "news network" than Big Bird gets to take credit for years and years of Peabody Award-winning journalism on PBS by the late Gwen Ifill. Hannity's like a late-night infomercial on NBC.
7/ It's past time CNN and MSNBC put out a joint statement saying, "FNC isn't a competitor of ours—their competitor is Dancing With the Stars or The Amazing Race. We compete with the nightly news on NBC, ABC, and CBS. We congratulate FNC for beating out re-runs of Punky Brewster."
8/ And Shep Smith's continued presence at FNC should be handled with the same urgency—and demands the same dynamic bilateral partnerships—as an international hostage situation. CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, and CBS should be airlifting Smith out of FNC with a blanket and cookies at hand.
9/ The binary journalism is doubling down on—to its detriment—is 100% false: it says either all journalism is hard news reporting (it isn't) or a mostly entertainment journalism media outlet must be treated as a news outlet (it's not). Find a happy medium or transcend the binary.
10/ Until we stop treating FNC as being in the same Nielsen category as CNN and MSNBC, we'll be doing the equivalent of combining the New York Times bestseller lists in fiction and nonfiction and then letting George R.R. Martin brag to friends that he's America's top biographer.
