The election is helping to boost ratings of late night comedy shows like the Daily Show and Colbert Report as well as SNL, Leno, Letterman and O’Brien (That’s Conan O’Brien, in case anyone forgotten.)
But one question is this: is the economic crisis generating stronger viewership for broadcast news?
I’ve written before that I think broadcast news could do a better job in covering the crisis (rather than using dominoes to demonstrate the problem, as CBS recently did).
Check out BusinessWeek’s article about Fox Business News: “The Uphill Battle at Fox Business Network: The economic crisis may give Murdoch’s year-old business channel a lift in its battle with CNBC.” Seems the crisis is helping bring in bigger numbers — more than 100,000 viewers at a time — but that may not be enough to compete with CNBC.