Playing with Numbers
Radio and television ratings reports are, frankly, pretty worthless. The more mobile we all are, the more different options we have, and the difficulty economically of getting a proper sample size all contribute to those ratings numbers having less value. Folks in the advertising and broadcasting industries still care, because it’s the only measurement tool we have, flawed though it is.
And as with all numbers you can twist them to fit whatever narrative you want, by looking at only a certain category of people, etc.
The folks at the Media Research Center admittedly are anti-left wing media and take opportunities to poke a stick at them when possible. That led to them noting that last week, CNN’s prime time numbers dropped to a three-decade low among those between the ages of 25 and 54, a key demographic for advertisers. Only 83,000 people watched during weeknight evenings last week.
Granted, we all know that the news audience, cable and broadcast, skews older than that…but MRC thought it would be fun to note some things that they concede are “weird and esoteric” that are more numerous than CNN’s audience.
For example, more than 92,000 people attended a women’s volleyball match in Nebraska last year.
There are 96,000 professional psychics working in this country.
Organizers got 119,000 people to gather in Miami to participate in a world record conga line.
There are some 127,000 female professional forklift operators registered in this country.
And something called the World Cube Association has more than 200,000 registered competitive Rubik’s Cube solvers.
You get the idea.
I guess if CNN starting doing more stories on women’s Rubik’s Cube solvers who operated forklifts, they might be on to something.
