Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly Continues To Clobber Megyn Kelly In Cable News Ratings
Earlier this summer, it seemed as if Megyn Kelly was catching up to Bill O’Reilly in the ratings. However, Megyn Kelly has turned off some of her audience, and her ratings show it. This week, Donald Trump’s enemy averaged 2.03 million viewers a night, while Bill O’Reilly, the man who helped her to prominence, averaged 2.65 million viewers a night. This data was averaged from nightly ratings reports at Adweek‘s TVNewser.
It’s important to note that both had much lower ratings than usual on Wednesday night (O’Reilly with 1.5 million and Kelly with 1.12 million) due to the Republican president debate, which took place on CNBC. Still, both had a lot to say about the candidates this week. On Thursday night, Kelly scolded CNBC moderator Becky Quick for letting Donald Trump get away with what she thought was a false immigration complaint. The Wrap reported on the situation.
“‘This is why u never ask a Q like this w/o having your source material at the ready,’ Kelly tweeted during the GOP debate after Quick seemed to succumb to Trump’s claim that he never criticized Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s call for more H-1B visa for foreign workers to work at tech companies.”
“And Dr. Ben Carson, who is second to Trump in the RealClearPolitics.com average of polls, those that asked who Republicans would vote for, takes the number one spot easily when it comes to likability. Head and shoulders above his next competitor, Senator Marco Rubio and a mile ahead of Donald Trump. That is just the latest in the series of polls that had Dr. Carson ahead of Trump. A change that has Trump telling voters to take action.”
On his show, Bill O’Reilly didn’t try and shill for any particular candidate. The night after, he was angry about how biased the moderators of the debate were. He noted how they tried to bait the candidates, but none of the candidates really screwed up. O’Reilly had Fox News analyst Charles Krauthammer to discuss the debate.
“This is the most pathetic performance by the moderators that I can ever remember seeing in a debate. They were overreaching, they were getting in the way, and they were in, the end, obnoxious,” Krauthammer angrily pointed out.
Krauthammer added that the moderators made their intentions obvious to the audience and, in the end, just made the Republicans look better. You can bet CNBC will never host a Republican debate again.
“I won in every poll as far as the debates are concerned. You have the polls in front of you but I don’t think you are going to read it because you never do,” Trump said to O’Reilly.
“Well it’s Internet polls. We don’t do Internet polls here,” Bill O’Reilly answered, knowing very well how Internet polls can be manipulated.
The conversation calmed down and Trump talked about how, despite taking a beating from the moderators, he came out unscathed. Of course, Megyn Kelly would beg to differ about that. The next week should be interesting on both O’Reilly and Kelly’s shows, especially given that Ben Carson has a good chance at beating Trump for the Republican nomination.
[Feature photos by Brad Barket and Craig Barritt/Getty Images]
