On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 6:35 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On May 31, 2011, at 1:53 AM, Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> > Long article, but enjoyed it:
> >
> >
> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-roger-ailes-built-the-fox-news-fear-factory-20110525
> >
> > I'm kind of embarassed to admit how many things I learned that I didn't
> know but now feel that I ought to have.
>
> This article assumes that Fox has a vast influence. But what about this:
>
> > Ailes knows exactly who is watching Fox News each day, and he is adept at
> playing to their darkest fears in the age of Obama. The network’s viewers
> are old, with a median age of 65: Ads cater to the immobile, the infirm and
> the incontinent, with appeals to join class action hip-replacement lawsuits,
> spots for products like Colon Flow and testimonials for the services of
> Liberator Medical (“Liberator gave me back the freedom I haven’t had since I
> started using catheters”). The audience is also almost exclusively white –
> only 1.38 percent of viewers are African-American. “Roger understands
> audiences,” says Rollins, the former Reagan consultant. “He knew how to
> target, which is what Fox News is all about.” The typical viewer of Hannity,
> to take the most stark example, is a pro-business (86 percent), Christian
> conservative (78 percent), Tea Party-backer (75 percent) with no college
> degree (66 percent), who is over age 50 (65 percent), supports the NRA (73
> percent), doesn’t back gay rights (78 percent) and thinks government “does
> too much” (84 percent). “He’s got a niche audience and he’s programmed to it
> beautifully,” says a former News Corp. colleague. “He feeds them exactly
> what they want to hear.”
>
> This doesn't sound like the most crucial demographic in the U.S. These are
> people who are already right-wing, who have little social influence, and
> are, as Wallace Stevens put it in a poem title, on the way to the bus.
> (Total viewership is on the order of 3 million, which is 1% of the U.S.
> pop.) Yeah, Ailes is evil, but is Fox all that it's cracked up to be?
>
> Doug
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