{"id":7915,"date":"2006-07-12T13:17:25","date_gmt":"2006-07-12T17:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/7915.html"},"modified":"2006-07-12T13:17:25","modified_gmt":"2006-07-12T17:17:25","slug":"the-median-age-for-bill-oreillys-audience-is-older-than-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-median-age-for-bill-oreillys-audience-is-older-than-you-think\/","title":{"rendered":"The median age for Bill O’Reilly’s audience is older than you think"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been days<\/i> since I said anything derogatory about [tag]Fox News[\/tag], so I hope readers won’t mind if I take note of an odd statistic about [tag]Bill O’Reilly[\/tag]’s audience.<\/p>\n

The New York Times had an interesting item<\/a> yesterday about O’Reilly’s arch-nemesis — [tag]MSNBC[\/tag]’s [tag]Keith Olbermann[\/tag] — and his success in an otherwise-bleak MSNBC prime-time line-up. There’s plenty of text about the usual network rivalries, but one item stood out.<\/p>\n

MSNBC’s research claims that the median age for Mr. O’Reilly’s audience is [tag]71[\/tag], while Mr. Olbermann’s is 59. (Fox and CNN both report that the only figures they get for median [tag]age[\/tag] of shows with older audiences is “65 plus,” and that Mr. O’Reilly’s audience falls into that category.)<\/p>\n

The age discrepancy has led Mr. Olbermann to dish out even more mockery in his attacks. “It’s slipping away from you,” he said, addressing Mr. O’Reilly on a “Countdown” segment last month. “You don’t know what to do. You can’t even lie well any more. Seriously: I understand. It’s called panic.” He added, “You begin to see the audience dying off, and the creases deepening in your forehead.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I haven’t seen “MSNBC’s research” and I have no way of checking its accuracy, but Fox concedes that the average O’Reilly viewer is 65 and older, so maybe MSNBC is right. Just for the sake of discussion, let’s assume it is.<\/p>\n

To be sure, there’s nothing wrong with 71-year-old people, but for a television personality, that’s probably not the median age you’re hoping for. In fact, while I’m not an expert, I think advertisers pay the most attention to [tag]ratings[\/tag] for viewers between the ages of 25 and 54. If O’Reilly’s typical viewer is 71, isn’t that going to undermine his pitch to advertisers a bit?<\/p>\n

Between this and his declining ratings<\/a>, no wonder O’Reilly seems so cranky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been days since I said anything derogatory about [tag]Fox News[\/tag], so I hope readers won’t mind if I take note of an odd statistic about [tag]Bill O’Reilly[\/tag]’s audience. The New York Times had an interesting item yesterday about O’Reilly’s arch-nemesis — [tag]MSNBC[\/tag]’s [tag]Keith Olbermann[\/tag] — and his success in an otherwise-bleak MSNBC prime-time line-up. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}