The audience for cable news shrank in 2010, according to a Pew Research Center report, with viewership for the dominant Fox News declining by 11 percent, CNN plummeting by 37 percent, and MSNBC down 5 percent. "It's not that people are not watching cable," says Amy S. Mitchell, deputy director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. "They're just not turning to news as much." The trend was particularly deflating for Fox News, which had been on a ratings growth spurt since 2007. Is this the end of Fox's meteoric climb in the ratings, and, if so, why?
Yes, viewers are finally getting wise: The experts are chalking this up to competition from the internet, says Ellen at News Hounds, but that's only part of it. Online news has been around for years. The main reason for the cable news networks' troubles — particularly those of the unfair and unbalanced Fox News — is that what they offer is not really news. "It's more about infotainment or political theater."
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