It was a big week for cable television news shows. Bill O’Reilly, as usual, crushed the competition according to the average of daily ratings at Showbuzz Daily . Bill O’Reilly averaged 3.07 million viewers a night with The O’Reilly Factor . One of his most popular segments occurred on Wednesday evening when O’Reilly talked about Donald Trump’s new “populist” approach.
The Fox News host started his show Wednesday night by introducing a clip of Donald Trump talking about African-Americans.
“I’m asking for the vote of every African-American citizen — struggling in our country — who wants a different and much better future. It’s time for our society to address some honest and very difficult truths: The Democratic party has failed the African-American community,” Trump said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3BrQ3JKWdc
Bill O’Reilly noted that Donald Trump was referring to the economic conditions that have not improved for African-Americans under President Obama. He then gave some statistics: blacks make up 13 percent of the population, but 38 percent of all violent crime arrests are African-American individuals. Bill also noted that African-Americans have the largest high school dropout rate and score lowest among ethnic groups in math and writing on SAT tests.
After agreeing that Donald Trump has a point, O’Reilly indicated that all the statistics indicate that under a progressive Democratic president, black Americans are less well off than they were under George W. Bush. However, Mr. O’Reilly also stated that it’s unlikely that African-Americans would rally behind Trump because he has been successfully demonized in their communities.
“Change is not in the air. Blacks and other minorities will go big for Hillary Clinton despite the current state of the union. Will anything change that? No.”
Bill’s biggest Fox News competitor, Megyn Kelly, averaged 2.37 million viewers a night. But the big story in terms of ratings was MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who averaged 1.57 million viewers a night. As Breitbart notes, Maddow is coming close to beating Kelly in one key demo .
“MSNBC’S The Rachel Maddow Show virtually tied Fox News’ Kelly File in the key 25-54 demographic on Wednesday, the third time this month in which Maddow has tied or beaten Megyn Kelly’s show in the all-important demo as MSNBC viewership has risen steadily through the summer.”
Kelly’s ratings may be lower because she has been on vacation since August 5. Instead of Kelly, viewers are watching guest hosts, which may account for this discrepancy. In July, when she was hosting, she scored No. 1 in the 25-54 demo.
Maddow has, however, become MSNBC’s biggest star and is a favorite among very progressive liberals. Sometimes, people believe she goes too far. According to Mediaite , Maddow even gave her viewers a “trigger warning” before showing anti-Hillary buttons at the DNC in July.
“MSNBC host Rachel Maddow gave sensitive viewers a warning Wednesday night before showing a graphic of anti-Hillary Clinton buttons on sale at the Republican National Convention,” the site said, before adding a quote by Maddow.
“I want to show you a little something that we shot earlier today. I will tell you that, some of our viewers, you’re going to find this offensive. You may find it uncomfortable. And so, you may not want to look at this stuff.”
Some of the buttons read, “Hillary for prison,” “Vote no to Monica’s ex-boyfriend’s wife in 2016,” and “Life’s a b***h, don’t vote for one.” The commenters after the article thought Rachel Maddow was being way too sensitive.
Oversensitive or not, Maddow’s audience is growing. CNN ‘s Anderson Cooper has a growing audience as well, at least when compared to one year ago. This week, he attracted an average of 1.14 million viewers a night — not Cooper’s best, but it shows he is consistently averaging over 1 million viewers a night. In terms of Rachel Maddow, it will be very interesting to see if she can eventually top Megyn Kelly in not only the 25-54 key demo, but overall ratings as well.
[Photo by Paul Morigi/AP Images and Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]
