Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck have each lost more than one-quarter of their audience in the last three months. An analysis of Nielsen Media Research data for February through April shows all three Fox News hosts with big ratings losses during that period: O'Reilly down 31 percent, Hannity down 28 percent, and Beck down 27 percent.
On MSNBC, Keith Olmermann's show was up 8 percent, and Rachel Maddow's show was up 30 percent. Ahem, 30 PERCENT!
The ratings are based on a five-day, rolling average using each show's live plus same-day total viewer numbers as reported by Nielsen Media Research for February 1 through April 30.
- O’Reilly is down 31 percent from early February through the end of April. He rebounded slightly in early April and then continued the plunge. Here’s your headline: 1.2 million people have stopped watching O’Reilly’s show in the last three months.
- Beck is down 27 percent during the period. He actually rebounded slightly the last two weeks of April. At his lowest, he was down 30 percent. He dropped like a stone in late March and has been moving in a much lower range ever since.
- Hannity is down 28 percent during the period. He flatlined at the end of April in about the same pattern as O’Reilly.
What’s the reason for the big Fox News declines? I have no idea.
Obama’s approval numbers were fairly stable during that time, so it’s not obviously attributable to a change in political enthusiasm. Olbermann is up 8 percent - a bump of only about 100,000 -- so the 1.2 million people who stopped watching O’Reilly didn’t switch over to MSNBC. CNN is down for the same period, so the Fox News viewers aren’t going there. I can’t think of any seasonality factors that would disproportionately affect the Fox News shows vs. the MSNBC shows.
(Raw data, gathered from Media Bistro's TVNewser blog, is a rolling five-day average of each show's live plus same-day total viewer numbers as reported by Nielsen Media Research. The raw data spreadsheet is recorded in thousands, so 750 means 750,000 viewers.)