2005 Annual Report - Cable TV Audience

In 2004, there was also growing evidence that the cable news audience was splintering along partisan lines. In particular, viewership of Fox News leans toward Republicans. To a lesser degree, CNN's viewership tilts towards Democrats. Democrats and Republicans are equally likely to say they watch MSNBC.

The 2004 media consumption survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds that 35% of Republicans say they are regular Fox News viewers, compared with just 21% of Democrats. Meanwhile, 28% of Democrats are regular CNN viewers, while only 19% of Republicans say they watch it regularly.

Percentage of Party Members Watching Specific Cable News Channels

Source: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, "News Audiences Increasingly Politicized," June 6, 2004

Much was made of those statistics in 2004, along with data showing more Republicans losing trust in the media generally. It was suggested that Americans were moving to their own ideological corners in their media consumption, that we were moving toward "Red and Blue truth," in the words of Time Magazine, or a more European style of ideological media. Perhaps the American model of a nonideological independent press was dying.

But the data suggest to us something more nuanced and less spectacular. The polarization phenomenon tends to occur primarily within the cable news audience, and not necessarily across the entire television news spectrum. A broad look (see Overview) shows that this ideological splintering exists in cable as nowhere else, and exists more at Fox News than anywhere else. Indeed, MSNBC's audience is evenly divided, and CNN, while it has lost Republicans to Fox, has almost as many independents as it does Democrats. In addition, Democrats are almost as likely to watch Fox as CNN.

Democrats simply don't watch cable as often as Republicans. According to the Pew Research Center's 2004 survey, while nearly half (46%) of Republicans are "regular" cable news viewers, only 36% of Democrats are "regulars." Democrats are more likely to be "occasional" cable news viewers than Republicans (36% vs. 27%).

Republicans as Percent of Cable Channel Audience

1998 to 2004

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, "News Audiences Increasingly Politicized," June 6, 2004

Within the specific cable channels, what appears to be happening over time is a migration of Republicans to Fox. In a breakdown of Fox's audience by party affiliation, the percentage that is Republican has increased considerably over the past six years, from 24% in 1998 to 41% in 2004. But there has not been a similar migration of Democrats to CNN or anywhere else.⁴

The data tell us something fascinating about cable and how it has come to resemble talk radio not only in content but in appeal. But they suggest far less about some growing trends in the media over all.