Did 24-Hour Cable News Kill America?

15:29Chuck Bryant:No, like, and they were highly criticized for some of their reporting. They were allowed to stay in Iraq and they, in some ways, became a propaganda arm for Saddam Hussein accidentally, but they still like showed what you were supposed to do covering a war. And also CNN was largely responsible for making the Gulf War the first live televised war in history because they covered it that much.

15:56Josh Clark:Yeah. I remember sitting around watching it with my roommates in college, like just coming home from after class and like putting the war on. Yeah. It was really weird.

16:04Chuck Bryant:It was always on because CNN was always on covering it.

16:07Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And, you know, we should also point out there would be a change at CNN after Turner and we'll get to that. But if you're if you're on the right side politically and you hate CNN, that was not Ted Turner's vision to start a left leaning media outlet. That that was not what he was trying to do at all. So I hope those words kind of come through here.

16:32Chuck Bryant:Sure. Sure. um so they there was a kind of out of the gate an issue that cnn faced which was if you're covering news like yeah news happens pretty frequently but 24 hours of coverage can be overdoing it so rather than just saying the same reporting over and over and over again they brought in people analysts to talk about to kind of unpack what that news meant maybe make predictions about how news was going to break, like which way is Congress going to vote? You know, is the president going to veto this? And that became like an established part of 24-hour news. And from that moment that those people started to come in, talking heads, pundits, like that laid the groundwork for opinion-based journalism.

17:25Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. It was, you know, after the Gulf War in the mid 90s, when is when things really started to change and started to lead to our current kind of sad state of affairs with the news cycle. And one of those things I kind of hinted at was when Ted Turner left CNN, Time Warner bought out CNN in 1996. And they were the ones responsible for saying like, hey, I think if we get a little more divisive here, and we lean left of center, uh, we can get more ad revenue. And I mean, that's kind of the, the sad thing about all the stuff we're going to talk about moving forward. It was, it was all money driven, you know?

18:04Josh Clark:Right.

18:05Chuck Bryant:Yes.

18:05Josh Clark:Uh, it was, it was all for, and still is for advertising dollars. And at the time you had, um, two really great political foils, uh, and Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich on the screen who two very much on the opposite sides of the spectrum guys who, who, you know, Clinton was a good villain for Republicans and then, you know, later liberals, as we would learn more stuff about him. And Gingrich was on the other side, man. Just, he really is the guy, like, entrenched in politics that ushered in that real good versus evil thing.

18:41Chuck Bryant:Yeah. As in the Democrats are evil, we're good, it's up to us to save America. Before that, The existential threats to the United States were external, namely the USSR. After Gingrich rose and took power of the GOP, the threat was domestic. It was the Democrats that were the threat to America as far as the GOP was concerned. That was new. That was new. And that was the beginning of the end of bipartisanship. Whereas now today, if you defect and vote against your own party, you're a traitor to your party. You know, not that you're doing what your constituents think you should do or voting by your conscience.

19:18Chuck Bryant:You're a traitor. That's new. And that's that's basically where it began.

19:23Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, I remember being a kid and I wasn't involved in politics when I was younger, like very into that kind of thing. But I remember hearing the adults during election season, not my parents, because they never talked about any of that stuff, but just other people like, you know, we're going to, I'm going to see which one of these men speaks to me the most. And I'm going to make up my mind on who I think is going to be the best leader. And it's just like, I mean, I know they're technically are probably independents today, but it's hard to imagine just that being a thing today at all, you know?

19:58Chuck Bryant:I'm sure for people who didn't grow up in times where that was possible, it's very hard to imagine. Another thing that happened in the 90s, like we talked about, Rush Limbaugh was enormous. Yeah. Fox News was another huge thing that happened when it was founded in 1996, and we'll talk about that afterward. And then I have a pet theory, Chuck. What did you think about this?

20:21Josh Clark:I had a feeling this was you. Yeah.

20:23Chuck Bryant:What do you think? Sure. I agree. My theory is that the real world premiered in 1992. And you might say, what does that have to do with anything? Well, it exposed people to reality television, which is not real. But this idea that you can just be horrible to other people, and that's like an acceptable way to be, the groundwork for that was laid around then. So you put all those things together. The mid-90s were a really bad beginning. The seed, the evil dark seed that rotted the core and heart of America out, that started in the mid-90s.

21:03Josh Clark:That's right. It sounds like a great time for a break because you mentioned something happening in 1996. And we'll talk about that right after this.

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22:02Chuck Bryant:Zach, nice vacation spot, but without T-Mobile 5G home internet, I feel so cut off. It's scary. Relax, just breathe in the woodsy-woodsiness. Don't open it!

22:15Josh Clark:It's a monster! I just know it! Buddy, it's just our DoorDash driver delivering our T-Mobile 5G home internet. Here you go, guys. Thanks! Look, Donald, now you can get the fastest 5G home internet with same-day delivery powered by DoorDash. And it's easy to set up. See? Nothing to be afraid of. We're saved! it's scary how easy it is get t-mobile 5g home internet delivered the same day powered by doordash just 35 bucks a month with auto pay and a voice line plus taxes and fees same day delivery for most internet eligible customers see if it's an option during checkout fastest according to ukla speed test based on speed test intelligence data second half 2025

22:57Chuck Bryant:all rights reserved you know that pile of clothes you've been meaning to deal with Yeah, same. That's why I love Trashy. It's the easiest way to clean out your closet, send your clothes somewhere better, and actually get rewarded for it. No more letting things sit around or wondering what to do with them. You just fill up a take-back bag with clothes you don't wear anymore, send it in, and Trashy takes care of the rest, keeping it out of landfills and giving it a second life. It's such a simple way to feel good about clearing space and doing something better for the planet. And here's the best part.

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24:10All right.

24:11Josh Clark:So before we broke, you mentioned Fox News debuting in 1996. Just very quickly about Roger Ailes, who helped launch Fox News. He was a Republican political consultant for many, many years. He helped to get Reagan, Nixon, all the way back to Nixon, George H.W. Bush elected. he understood that TV was a very powerful thing as far as shaping public opinion by this point. He had met Rush Limbaugh in 1991 and for a little while produced a TV version of Limbaugh's show in the early 90s. But it was in 1996 when an Aussie named Rupert Murdoch, who had previously given us The Simpsons with the Fox Broadcasting Company, which he launched in 1986, the Fox Company, he said, you know what?

24:59Josh Clark:we need our own news station. Let's get Fox News on the airwaves. And Roger Ailes, you're going to be the guy to do it.

25:08Chuck Bryant:Yeah, he designed Fox News as we understand it today, basically right out of the gate. And one thing to understand about him being a political operative who worked on the Nixon campaign, that 68 Nixon campaign was where a guy named Kevin Phillips came up with what's called the Southern Strategy today, which was essentially the idea that politics is about who hates who and then playing on those prejudices to get people to vote essentially about other people. It's where the culture war started. And Roger Ailes basically took that, the politics of who hates who, and put it on TV as a 24-hour cable news network.

25:45Josh Clark:Yeah, and charged for it.

25:47Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that's another thing too that we'll see. Like they have made tons and tons of cash, but they're in a really big turning point right now because of how their business model.

25:57Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. So in the beginning, they had a claim, you know, Ailes and Murdoch, that it was going to be Fox News is going to be an apolitical channel. Quote, we expect to do fine, balanced journalism. But behind the scenes, they were like, hey, we think that most mainstream news outlets have a liberal bias. So we're going to come along and correct that with Fox News. And that fair and balanced motto that Fox News launched under Ailes was a literal troll to liberal critics. It was, you know, he knew it wasn't fair and balanced. And so that was his way of poking the bear. I think in 2017, when Ailes was fired in the very famous, or infamous rather, sexual harassment scandal.

26:42Josh Clark:That's when they got rid of the fair and balanced tag for good.

26:46Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and Roger Ailes and Bill O 'Reilly.

26:48Josh Clark:Yeah.

26:49Chuck Bryant:Among others. So, Ailes was out, but he had been, you know, he had governed this thing for 20 years. and like his vision is still there today. Like the way that he shaped it is still, Fox is essentially still the same thing as it was from 1996. It was, he perfected it right out of the box essentially. And it really started to kind of gain traction pretty quickly after it came along because Bill Clinton handed them a beautiful gift in like a Robin's egg blue Tiffany's box with a beautiful bow on it. And that is called the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

27:30Josh Clark:Yeah, in that box was a cigar and a blue dress.

27:33Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

27:34Josh Clark:Yeah, that was, you know, yeah, there's no other way to look at it than a gift because they were able to run wild with that. And they saw ratings jump by 400 percent. And we're like, wow, we can literally print money now. This is amazing. you know not too far on the heels of that was the contested 2000 election of which we had a complete episode right of bush v gore and then not too long after that 9-11 and then the subsequent war in iraq so fox news really got off to a strong start thanks to these sort of big media events

28:10Chuck Bryant:yes for sure and one other thing about the same stuff too the 2000 election 9-11 the war in iraq Like, Fox News was reporting this from the Republican viewpoint. All of these things, like they were supporting George Bush. They weren't questioning whether we should invade Iraq. Like, this was the angle that it was coming from. And all the way back then, say around 2000, like they were the only ones just overtly producing slanted news. The other cable news and broadcast news were still trying to essentially carry out the fairness doctrine to the best of their ability.

28:49Josh Clark:Yeah, so we should point that out. But Fox News really jumped ahead and was beating CNN in the ratings for the first time by 2002. I think they command about 70 % of the cable news audience today.

29:01Chuck Bryant:Right.

29:02Josh Clark:So they're kicking everyone's butt on that front. Right. We need to talk about MSNBC, which we'll get to the name change to MS Now later. We'll refer to them as MSNBC in this section because it's about when they launched, which was a few months before Fox News in 1996. I never knew that MS was Microsoft.

29:27Chuck Bryant:I think I knew that.

29:29Josh Clark:Yeah, it was launched as a partnership with Microsoft. So MSNBC was Microsoft NBC, and they were trying to get, like, you know, this was the beginning of the tech movement. They were trying to get young, tech-savvy audience members. They had, like, shows kind of tailored to that. There was one called The SITE, S-I-T-E, with Soledad O 'Brien. It did not work out. And then after that, they were like, all right, you know what? We need to do this saturation coverage model that CNN launched, that Fox News is crushing it. But they started out doing conservative news.

30:03Chuck Bryant:Yeah, they were trying to basically take Fox on where it was on its own territory.

30:09Josh Clark:Yeah.

30:10Chuck Bryant:Very surprisingly, Laura Ingram and Tucker Carlson both started at MSNBC.

30:16Josh Clark:It's funny to think about now.

30:18Chuck Bryant:Right. And I think Tucker Carlson was the one who later convinced MSNBC executives to hire Rachel Maddow. Yeah. The same year that Tucker Carlson was hired. So, like, MSNBC was this kind of petri dish for all sorts of TV on-air newsy personalities. Yeah. That would become huge later on. And again, like you were saying, it was because they were basically trying to take on Fox. And that's one thing to understand about MSNBC is the moment it pivoted from trying to be like the tech news channel to, you know, opinion news. It was essentially just completely agnostic. It was up for whoever was going to pay the most, which is why they tried to take on Fox because it was clear Fox was making the most money.

31:08Chuck Bryant:Right. And then they found, well, actually, if we present ourselves as the antidote to Fox, like the liberal Fox, then, you know, we can probably make even more money. And they did. And that's what happened.

31:20Josh Clark:Yeah, and they really hit it big in 2006 when Keith Olbermann hit the airwaves. He had a show called Countdown. It was a primetime show. And on Countdown one week, he did a rant that he called a special commentary where he was criticizing the Bush administration's handling or mishandling rather of Hurricane Katrina. and MSNBC, even at that time, were like, no, man, that's a little much. Like, you need to tone that down. But then the ratings were going through the roof. People loved it. And so they're like, oh, okay, well, I guess that's the new way forward. And go, Keith Olbermann, go.

31:58Chuck Bryant:Yep, they unleashed the beast. And he just set the groundwork for everybody else. And that's exactly what they were doing. During primetime, they had talking heads who hosted their own show. That were just like overtly dismissing other contrary opinions and talking about how dumb that was. And, you know, really just trying to destabilize the opposing party's ideas, right? So, I mean, their primetime ratings just went through the roof. Apparently, I think it went up 60 % from 2007 to 2008 when they started attacking the right. Right. And also when Obama was like a candidate and then, you know, president, and it was this huge thing that apparently also boosted their ratings.

32:46Chuck Bryant:And I saw that MSNBC traditionally has actually done better when they're promoting a Democrat who has who's in charge of the White House or in charge of Congress. than they are bashing the right. Fox tends to do the opposite. They do better when there's a Democrat in power and they bash them. They do better when they're out of power.

33:09Josh Clark:Yeah, well, I mean, that's something we should talk about quickly, I guess. There was a paper in 2025 from a UC Boulder finance professor named Diego Garcia who analyzed what these networks are talking about, who they're talking about, and how are they talking about them. and they found like kind of supporting what you just said that msnbc spent the majority of their time about 60 of their time talking about republicans fox news about the same in reverse talking about democrats and obviously both speaking very negatively about the others um and this also trickles down to uh cnbc and bloomberg and then fox business on the right and that outrage like attacking the opposite side that outrage viewership uh they found really sold.

33:54Josh Clark:That goes by a lot of names like Rage Profiteering or obviously just Selling Anger or Angertainment. I'm not a big fan of that one.

34:03Chuck Bryant:What about the Anger Industrial Complex?

34:06Josh Clark:Yeah, that's pretty good.

34:07Chuck Bryant:Sure.

34:08Josh Clark:Yeah, but they found out it sells listeners, which in turn sells ads and makes money. So they really all sort of, or those two at the very least, double down on that. CNN is still, And this isn't just us opinionizing. They're literal media watchdogs that, you know, study and rate these channels. And CNN of the big three cable news networks is ranked, you know, slightly left of center compared to more left on NBC and obviously way more right for Fox News. Right.

34:39Chuck Bryant:And then also bear in mind, CNN typically has the lowest ratings of MSNBC, Fox, and CNN, right? Yeah, because angertainment, sorry, sells like really well. And the reason why is because you get a physical like pop from being angry. Like it releases neurotransmitters that make you feel good and powerful and alive again. And then you start to come down and you want it again. So you go back, you stay tuned. you say glued for more. And like you said, that's this divide in America has just come from people who are targeting the brains of people just pressing that button over and over again to keep them on the same channel for money.

35:22Chuck Bryant:That's it. That's it. That's all there is to it.

35:25Josh Clark:Yeah, I was trying my best to find out any kind of study on or just statistics on how many hours a day uh loyal viewers of each of these channels like has it on uh and i could only just go from what i and anecdotally see which is i uh i know people on the right that uh in their house like have fox news just on as oh yeah that's the background music it's on all day long when you're passing through the room you can just pick up a tidbit here and there not necessarily just sitting literally and watching it, eyes glued forward the entire time, but it's just on. And I don't know anybody on the left that I know that has the TV literally constantly on their favorite cable news network.

36:13Josh Clark:It's interesting.

36:14Chuck Bryant:I do. It's typically CNN that'll have, that'll be on all day. Oh, see, I don't know anyone that does that.

36:19Josh Clark:It's good to know that that happens. Yeah, it definitely does. It seems, just to me, it seems unhealthy and really out there to only have that on all day long.

36:29Chuck Bryant:It is.

36:30Josh Clark:No matter what side you're on.

36:31Chuck Bryant:Deeply, deeply unhealthy. It's bad for the person. It's bad for society to have that on all day long.

36:37Josh Clark:Yeah, any channel or any television. For sure, totally, totally.

36:42Chuck Bryant:So there was a study also that we found, it was from 2025 and they looked at, it was in Nature Magazine or Nature of the Journal. They looked at primetime shows from 2012 to 2022 on Fox, MSNBC, and CNN to find out which were the most polarized. They found that over those 10 years, Fox had the largest number of highly polarizing shows, Sean Hannity, The O 'Reilly Factor, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram. But CNN's Cuomo Primetime and MSNBC's Deadline White House were the most polarizing shows across all three networks.

37:22Josh Clark:Oh, interesting.

37:22Chuck Bryant:There's something else to unpack there too, Chuck. These are primetime shows.

37:27Josh Clark:Yeah.

37:28Chuck Bryant:That's new as well. That means that people, like this is where these cable networks make the bulk of their advertising revenue is primetime. That means that people left entertainment. They left cop shows, court shows, medical dramas, and moved over to news. Cable news. That's what they watch in primetime now.

37:50Josh Clark:That's just boring.

37:52Chuck Bryant:But it's not, though. It's like your buttons are just pressed over and over and over. Yeah. You know?

38:00Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. You know, one thing we do need to point out, though, because these are primetime shows that, like, it's changing the political landscape and how our country, like, thinks about our fellow citizens. So it's an important thing to address. Some of the stuff you see on Fox News is not based in truth. And that is not just my opinion as somebody who's clearly on the left side of things. You need only look at something like the$800 million, like close to a billion dollar settlement to avoid a very public, highly anticipated trial where they were going to have to trot up, you know, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.

38:39Josh Clark:and like put these people on the stand to talk about the literal lies they told about dominion voting systems. So that that trial was coming up and they're like, no, no, no, that would be really bad if we had to go up on the stand and admit under oath that we lied about all this stuff. So let's just settle for eight hundred million dollars and never even fully admit wrongdoing.

39:00Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and I mean, it's not just that one, like the cover up, the idea that there was a cover up over Benghazi conspiracy theories about the death of Seth Rich, the birther conspiracy theory, all these things reported on lie that Donald Trump had the 2020 election stolen from him. Like these things were reported, right? Not like, hey, this is what some people are saying. Like these were reported as fact, right? And so this is the part of like the twisting or the separating of the shared reality that has like scholars concerned, just everyday people who know about this concerned. And like it's typically viewed from what I've seen as a false equivocation to say, well, MSNBC does that too.

39:49Chuck Bryant:Nobody does it like Fox does. They just don't. That's just fact. But that's not to say it doesn't happen on other networks like MSNBC. One really standout example is the Russiagate episode with Rachel Maddow, who was covering the Mueller investigation is basically like, here it comes any moment now they're going to show that Trump is this puppet that's being directed by the Kremlin and was really like so much. So she got sued for$67 million for libel. And she beat that. But, you know, it was still, it had legs. Like she was really, really promoting this conspiracy theory. And yes, it was tied to Robert Mueller's actual investigation.

40:34Chuck Bryant:And that actually was happening. But the leaps and bounds and like intimation she was making just went well beyond any kind of journalistic standard. And then there's one other thing, Chuck, too, that all three do. And that is essentially filtering. what makes it on there, right? So like say CNN decides that they're not going to put some negative coverage of Barack Obama on. And instead they're going to either just not cover that or they're going to cover positive coverage of him, right? That's filtering. You're filtering news to help promote like a favored candidate. And when you're doing opinion journalism, you have a favorite candidate.

41:13Chuck Bryant:You have a candidate that you hate. And your point is to teach your viewers to love that candidate or hate that candidate. That's just, that arises from it naturally.

41:25Josh Clark:Yeah, there was a study in 2023 where they paid Fox News viewers, like conservative people, they paid them to watch CNN for a month, for 30 days, to see like what effect that had on their political views. And what they found was they were seeing news that Fox News didn't even cover that's part of that filtering they were like oh well we didn't know this was happening

41:48Chuck Bryant:because fox news just literally wouldn't cover it yeah uh they filter out that stuff to fit a

41:53Josh Clark:narrative and um i think it after after the month the month they had a a slightly lower opinion of donald trump these conservatives did and a slightly higher opinion and this was at the time in 2023 when mail-in balloting was a big deal a slightly higher opinion of mail-in ballots But then they also said the follow-up was like a short-lived thing once they went back to Fox News. That stuff went away. But this is something I see a lot when I see a story where I'm like, well, here's a big factual thing that happened that's a big black eye. And I will go see. And a lot of times, and this is online, foxnews.com literally just doesn't cover it.

42:34Chuck Bryant:Right.

42:35Josh Clark:Like at all. It's just not there. Like it didn't happen. And if you're only getting your news from one source and you don't know that something is literally happening because it's not being covered, that's bad for democracy.

42:46Chuck Bryant:For sure. Yes. Yeah. Because you just, yeah, you can't hold somebody accountable if you're not actually reporting on the bad stuff, too, you know?

42:55Josh Clark:Should we take a break? Yeah.

42:57Chuck Bryant:Let's take a break.

42:58Josh Clark:All right. We'll be right back.

43:36Josh Clark:We'll see you next time. Score and Megan Quinn. To binge-worthy reads you'll want to finish in one sitting. Find your next summer read at Sourcebooks.com. That's Sourcebooks.com.

43:51Chuck Bryant:Zach, nice vacation spot, but without T-Mobile 5G home internet, I feel so cut off. It's scary. Relax. Just breathe in the woodsy woodsy-ness. Zach! Don't open it. It's a monster. I just know it.

44:06Josh Clark:Buddy, it's just our DoorDash driver delivering our T-Mobile 5G home internet.

44:11Chuck Bryant:Here you go, guys.

44:12Josh Clark:Thanks. Look, Donald, now you can get the fastest 5G home internet with same-day delivery powered by DoorDash. And it's easy to set up. See? Nothing to be afraid of. We're saved! It's scary how easy it is. Get T-Mobile 5G home internet delivered the same day. Powered by DoorDash. Just$35 a month with auto pay and a voice line. Plus taxes and fees. Same day delivery for most internet eligible customers. See if it's an option during checkout. Fastest according to Ookla Speed Test based on Speed Test intelligence data second half 2025. All rights reserved.

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45:27Chuck Bryant:You can check it out at Trashy.io. Plus, with Trashy Unlimited, you can get unlimited bags for just$48 your first year. An easy at-home clean-out system, so you can stay on top of it all year long. Clean out, donate, earn rewards. Head to Trashy.io to get started today.

45:59Chuck Bryant:so chuck we talked about opinion media i've been calling it opinion journalism and i think that's actually a contradiction in terms yeah so opinion media like we said it's just basically like putting somebody who's willing to say stuff about you know they're fairly knowledgeable about a particular topic and they're going to say something and maybe it's even a controversial opinion, like that's opinion media. And it is so much cheaper than actual journalism, which is one reason why it's just such a huge prominent part of prime time on cable news.

46:30Josh Clark:Yeah. Cheaper meaning inexpensive, not like a cheap shot. Just to clear that up, like real journalism takes a lot of time, which gets expensive. You have to conduct interviews and you have to research real data and you have to fact check and you have to cultivate your sources. If you just throw someone on who is like, hey, I'm mad about this thing. I'll go on TV and talk about it. Like, I'm a famous quote unquote journalist. Like, that's super cheap. All you have to do is kind of frame the bare bones of a story and then rant about it. And that negativity really sells. There was an analysis in 2011 where a researcher examined the primetime lineups of the two really big opposing sides, Fox News and MSNBC.

47:14Josh Clark:And they were obviously ideologically opposed, but they were – Fox News was, as far as the tone and language they used, was 92 % negative, 8 % neutral, and 0 % positive. On the other side, MSNBC was 90 % negative, 5 % neutral, and 5 % positive. And it's that cultivation of anger and fear that very sadly, that's what drives the loyalty and the viewership these days.

47:40Chuck Bryant:Exactly. Because again, anger is an addictive thing. And they know how to press those buttons. One of the ways they do press the buttons too, this is groundbreaking as far as journalism goes. Dave helped us with this. And the way that he put it was they make you the viewer, the protagonist. Yeah. So that means that this news that's happening, it's happening to you. The Democrats are doing this to you. They're trying to take money out of your pocket or vice versa. You know, the GOP is trying to drive this country into fascism and authoritarianism. Like, like it's you that this is happening to your family is going to get, you know, taken by in the middle of the night by the jackboots or something like that.

48:22Chuck Bryant:Right. Yeah. So, like, that's new, and that cuts through, like, directly to the person. So if you're pressing someone's buttons to try to make them angry, talking to them directly and saying you are the victim, that will get things going pretty easily. That primes the old pump pretty well.

48:40Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. You know, I mean, I think that's one of the saddest things about all this is the fact that that negative content is what sells. And that's just the reality of kind of where we are. But that has fueled a partisan gap that is like we've not seen at any other time in our history. And there's always been partisan divides, but not like we have now. There was a Pew research study on that partisan divide in 1994. And this was before Fox News and MSNBC launched, because I think they launched in 96, like we said. But fewer at the time, fewer than 20 percent of either Republicans or Democrats view the opposing party as very unfavorable.

49:22Josh Clark:By 2017, that number was 45%, so more than doubled. Also, from that same study in 1994, only 60 % of Republicans identified themselves as, quote, more consistently conservative than the average Democrat. By 2017, that number had reached 95%. And on the Democrat side, 97 % identified as more consistently liberal than the average Republican, up from 70 % in 1994. So, you know, they're both, according to their mandates, they're both doing what they want to do very well.

50:01Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I also saw to update it a little bit in 2022, 72 % of GOP respondents said that Democrats were immoral and 63 % of Democrats said that Republicans were immoral.

50:16Josh Clark:Yeah.

50:17Chuck Bryant:That is a character like attack.

50:19Josh Clark:Yeah.

50:20Chuck Bryant:Not like you have stupid ideas or you're going to, you know, waste all of our tax dollars. You are a bad person. Your morals are compromised. Maybe you don't even have any morals. That is a totally different level of attack. And we're talking about this American calling that American that because they believe something different politically. And all of this, again, is being fostered, supported and stoked by the 24 hour cable news that different sides watch all the time.

50:51Josh Clark:Yeah, it's not. I mean, I kind of thought before we looked into this stuff and the actual data that like online, you know, because things are so siloed online as far as the echo chamber goes. If you get your your news from the Internet or social media, especially. But there was a study from University of Pennsylvania that found that cable TV news is way more divisive. only 4 % of Americans get their online news. So, you know, social media or whatever online from predominantly left or right-leaning sources compared to 17 % of Americans. It said they got 50 % or more of their TV news from a very hard right or very hard left network.

51:32Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and half watched Fox News, the other half watched MSNBC or CNN.

51:37Josh Clark:Yeah, right down the middle.

51:38Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I mean, one of the other things too is like Fox just gets criticized. and criticized. And yes, they were innovators, pioneers. They completely changed journalism. And they do stuff that CNN and MSNBC don't do. But it just makes you wonder, like, how different would things be today if CNN and MSNBC had just stuck to good journalism and just let Fox do their own thing? The fact that they entrenched and dug in on the other side because they wanted advertising dollars too. And there's a whole untapped market out there of liberals and left-leaning people that aren't being spoken to, if they had just kept their journalistic integrity, like, I don't think we would be in this mess today.

52:24Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, you don't watch this stuff, do you? I haven't turned on a cable news network in, I don't know, since the early 2000s, maybe?

52:34Chuck Bryant:I've definitely watched it much more recent than that. But I mean, I think once I realized, and I think this is typically the case for people, like the point is to upset you and make you mad. That's what they're trying to do. That's the whole thing. It's tough not to resent that and just be like, I'm not subjecting myself to this.

52:52Josh Clark:Yeah, I think for me it was when you could really source your news very specifically online is when that's when I fully like made that switch.

53:00Chuck Bryant:Right. So cable news is actually doing pretty good right now, even though cable as a whole is losing viewership. More and more people are cutting cords. I think more people are getting their news and information online. Even though it's still smaller relative to the number of people who get their news from cable news, the proportions, the trends are shifting. And one of the reasons why is because cable news viewers are literally dying off, right? For the most part, the median ages of CNN, Fox, and MSNBC viewers are 67, 68, and 71. Right? Yeah. Those people aren't going to live forever. And as they start to pass away, there's not new people who are younger coming in behind them.

53:55Chuck Bryant:That's not where younger people are going. First of all, they don't even have cable anymore. And secondly, if they do, they're not going to watch cable news necessarily. They're probably going to be online getting their news.

54:06Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And, you know, viewership is declining. Fox News has seen the most dramatic decline. They're down 21 % in total primetime viewership compared to the same weeks year over year, February to, well, February to February, 25 to 26. And then in 2025, that is when MSNBC, I guess late last year, is when they parted ways with their NBC News parent company. And that's when they relaunched as what is now MSNOW. Their viewership actually, it looks like that might have worked. They increased by 15 % year-over-year for the same time frame. And CNN is the one that's really jumped up. They saw a 46 % year-over-year increase over that same period.

54:52Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and I think one reason why Fox is declining relative to MS now and CNN is because there's Newsmax, News Nation, One American News Network.

55:01Josh Clark:Right. Three upstarts. Even further right outlets, yeah.

55:04Chuck Bryant:Right. They were like, you thought Fox was hard right? Watch this. Yeah. And Fox suddenly seems centrist compared to those guys. So they're dragging a lot of people away from Fox News. I think that's a big problem for Fox.

55:17Josh Clark:Yeah, they lost some of their stars too, you know, when Tucker Carlson left. And obviously before that, what was his face? Bill O 'Reilly was, yeah, those are big losses for that network.

55:27Chuck Bryant:For sure. And I think losing Roger Ailes, too, probably was a big deal for it, too. Yeah, good point. But also their whole business model we were talking about earlier is in jeopardy because, like, they make money through advertisers, true, but their advertisers are from viewers, right? And so if fewer people are buying cable, they have fewer viewers. they also make money from subscriptions right so when you pay for your cable and you're like i have to pay my cable bill to the cable company you're actually not you're paying the cable company a fraction of that the rest is being divided up among all the cable channels who charge a fee to be included in this bundle that's the wholesale business model that's what cable news does all cable channels do um that with cable dying they're not going to be able to do that anymore Now they're going to have to be like, actually, we want to charge you directly like Netflix or Hulu does to get Fox.

56:23Chuck Bryant:We're going to be streaming online, right? Or to get CNN. They're in the same jeopardy too. And that means people who are going to be like, wait, I got Fox News for free before. You didn't really because it was part of cable you were paying for. But to you, it was free. And now Fox is asking you to pay, you know, 12 bucks a month or something like that to get it. Some people will do that. Some people won't. So they're really kind of worried about that. And not just Fox. Again, MSNBC and CNN are facing the same crisis, just apparently to a slightly lesser degree right now.

56:57Josh Clark:Right, but the writing's on the wall for everybody, and they're all trying to pivot a little bit to the more online model, even in little ways like CNN prioritizing vertical video podcast. You know, MSNBC has a lot of very popular podcasts. Rachel Maddow is at the center of their world podcast-wise, but those have found big-time audiences. So they're, you know, they know what's coming. And they know that I think three quarters of the baby boomer generation are going to be gone by the year 2037. And that's a big chunk of all these audiences.

57:33Chuck Bryant:For sure. One last thing. Something occurred to me while I was researching this, Chuck, that there is a silver lining. There's a good thing to this huge partisan divide of one side versus the other that cable news has helped bring about. And that is that it is carved out a middle of people who are like, wow, Democrats and Republicans are terrible and they suck as both parties, which to me is open like a room for a viable third party to start to develop. Maybe multiple third parties start to develop and actually get rid of like the two party system might have shot itself in the foot by going so full on tribal.

58:16Chuck Bryant:That's my hope. That's I'm hoping that at least that good comes out of this.

58:21Josh Clark:Yeah, me too. Because none of it's any good for our country.

58:25Chuck Bryant:You know, it genuinely isn't. It genuinely isn't. And to our conservative Republican right on the right listeners, like this is not an attack on you or your beliefs. And us throwing Rachel Maddow into the mix was not just bait for the right to you left leaning listeners. Like she really did overdo Russiagate. Like we tried to do this as fair and balanced as we possibly could. So please don't have taken it any other way.

58:52Josh Clark:Yeah, we say flush all three down the toilet.

58:55Chuck Bryant:Exactly, Chuck. Exactly.

58:59Josh Clark:Oh, man. What a fun episode. I enjoyed this one.

59:03Chuck Bryant:Well, I'm glad you did, Chuck. I think you just accidentally walked right into listener mail then.

59:11Josh Clark:All right. I'm going to call this a follow-up about the Hindenburg episode. Hey, guys. Just finished listening to the Hindenburg. Great stuff. One thing that really got me laughing was the Ben Dover comments. Magically, I have an adult friend whose name is Ben Dover. as you can imagine he's a great guy as i think anyone with names like that could be teased or made fun of sure turn out to be amazing people usually so shout out to all the bendovers out

59:36Chuck Bryant:there in the world including my friend nice uh long time listener and i work as a wildlife

59:40Josh Clark:biologist and the first time i was introduced to your show was during a long drive to get a california condor sick with lead poisoning from northern california back to the san diego zoo to keep habituating the bird we drove many hours with the bird in a crate in the back of the suv and absolute silence in the past time, my coworker and I shared one side of corded earbuds and alternated between our favorite podcasts. This is long before smartphones are an everyday occurrence and people could listen to whatever, whenever. I'm now a mom and still find ourselves on long drives because we live in a pretty remote place.

1:00:13Josh Clark:My family also listens and loves the podcast because it's informational, interesting, and kid-friendly. And we hope to make it to a live show the next time you're close by. Thanks for all you do and keeping us company over so many years and so many miles. That is from Katie.

1:00:28Chuck Bryant:Thanks a lot, Katie. Is it Katie or KT? Katie. Okay. Thank you, Katie. That was a very cute little sketch that you made for us there. I can just imagine you and your coworker each with the earbud.

1:00:41Josh Clark:I love that.

1:00:43Chuck Bryant:If you want to be like Katie and get in touch with us with a cute little anecdote, we love those. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

1:00:56Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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