In a recent interview, CBS Evening News host Scott Pelley said that he thinks that Fox News really doesn’t have very many viewers–underestimating the network’s actual ratings by about 90 percent.
Pelley told Deadline Hollywood that Fox might have perhaps as few as “200,000 viewers.”
Deadline asked Pelley what he thought of the cable news outlets that cater to “just one segment of the political spectrum in their reporting.”
“Certainly. It’s no surprise,” Pelley replied. “Fox is associated with the right and MSNBC is associated with the left and they’ve done that because it is a business model. It’s a strategy. They’ve decided to bite off one small part of the viewership and be happy with that 200,000 viewers, 300,000 viewers that they have.”
Pelley went on to note that his network reached many millions. “But when you are talking to 7 million viewers across the country,” Pelley boasted, “you have got to represent everybody’s views and have got to give them the impression that you are being as honest as you know how to be.”
As Newsbusters notes, the numbers are quite a lot higher–in fact, 200,000 often constitutes only ten percent of the actual figure.
According to TV Newser, Fox averaged 1.5 million viewers per hour last Monday, and 2.15 million in primetime.
The O’Reilly Factor had 3 million viewers, The Five had 2.2 million as did Special Report.
TV Newser has also reported that Pelley’s news broadcast reached a few million less than the seven million he ascribed to himself. The television reporting site found that the Evening News drew about 5.7 million in the latest ratings books.
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