Glenn Beck Stinks up CNN's Ratings

One of the arguments put forth by defenders of status quo in political talk radio, where there are 10 hours of conservative talk for every one hour of liberal talk, is the so-called liberal bias of the cable news channels.

The allegation, which has been made in numerous published comments on blogs over the past few weeks, was made by Paul Weyrich, CEO of the Free Congress Foundation in the National Ledger.

"In addition to dominating the network news, cable news (with the exception of Fox News) and much of the social agenda we see in television programming, the liberals want equal radio time – free equal radio time – to take on the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity."

Liberals dominate cable news!

Let’s not even talk about Fox Noise. However, is that why liberals get one hour of Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, offset by six hours of Joe Scarborough, Tucker Carlson, and Chris Matthews?

It sure isn’t because of the ratings. Olbermann’s show is the highest rated opinion show on MSNBC (it reaches 28% more homes than the number two show which is hosted by Scarborough)

Remember it was MSNBC that cancelled Phil Donahue’s show, which at the time was the news nets number one show and replaced it with Carlson’s show which is now in last place.

CNN isn’t any better. Liberals get no shows and right wingers like Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck get regular slots on Headline News and special appearances on CNN.

And what is this thing that CNN has for Beck? Despite the fact that his show on Headline News is the lowest rated political opinion show on network television, he was given the opportunity to replace the low-rated Paul Zahn on CNN last week. Well, the results are in and Beck has even done worse than Zahn!

"According to New Corpse, Beck’s HLN program averaged 139,400 viewers in the 25-54 demo the week prior to his CNN stint. Moving to the much more widely viewed CNN, he was only able to increase his audience by 1.7%. Even worse, he under-performed the teetering Paula Zahn by over 23%. Zahn, it should be noted, is rumored to be on the way out because of her lackluster ratings."

Beck’s performance stunk up CNN’s ratings so badly that the news net wound up in third place – behind MSNBC -- for the first time in over three months. The last time MSNBC won a week against CNN was in April, when it hosted the presidential debates in South Carolina.

Maybe the suits at CNN like Beck’s provocative style.Like when he said of the 9/11 widows:

"This is horrible to say, and I wonder if I'm alone in this—you know, it took me about a year to start hating the 9-11 victims' families? Took me about a year."

Or maybe it was the uncompassionate comment he said about some of the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

"All we're hearing about, are the people in New Orleans. Those are the only ones that we're seeing on television are the scumbags...It's just a small percentage of those who were left in New Orleans, or who decided to stay in New Orleans, and they're getting all the attention."

But then again, these comments were made on the radio, and we all know that talk radio is liberal free zone.