"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:


"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:


Sometime we'll have to talk about Murdoch and why he's directing Fox the
way
he is. As one of his former directors said last year, if a liberal bias
would make him more money, he'd switch Fox 180 degrees, starting
tomorrow.
Meantime he has a near-monopoly on conservative-biased news on major
cable,
which gets him a larger audience share than he could get by competing
directly with the rest of the media. That's what the Fox game is all
about.
It's a classic market-segmentation game.


Hows that strategy working for MSNBC?

Wes

Extremely well. Check the numbers.

CABLE NEWS RACE
FRI., SEPT 11, 2009

FOXNEWS O'REILLY 3,212,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 2,644,000
FOXNEWS BECK 2,544,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 1,968,000
FOXNEWS SHEP 1,705,000
MSNBC DOBERMANN 1,067,000
MSNBC MADDOW 948,000
CNN BLITZER 889,000
CNN KING 875,000

Just did.

Wes

No, you didn't. What's remarkable there is that a cable news channel with a
segment audience (MSNBC) is beating out a general-market channel (CNN) in
this particular category.

The strategy is to make money, Wes. If they've segmented an audience on
psychographics (something that Murdoch pioneered, and at which he is a
supreme practitioner) and you can outdraw key mass-market players while
doing so, you've got a potential money maker.

Murdoch in the US has corralled off the conservative audience, which had
been underserved. He has high loyalty ratings on most of his
politically-segmented properties because he knows how to make the audience
jump up and salivate. Fox also has imposed a big cost-of-entry, which is
keeping competitors away from this segment.

MS and NBC had to segment the psychographics again -- it would have been
'way too expensive to go for market share against the mainstream players
(and NBC wasn't about to cannibalize its own market share) -- and there is
only a much smaller segment left, which you could describe as "liberals."
(It's more lifestyle than politics, but the result is the same.) But it's
still potentially very profitable, for similar reasons.

If you want to discuss this further I'll pull out my notes from a lecture I
used to give on this very subject. It's a classic marketing subject for news
media, especially since cable became an issue. Now you have to decide if
you're going head-to-head against established players (the old networks and
CNN, for the most part) or if you can target a segment. Traditionally, they
try to segment demographics. Murdoch's genius is in segmenting by
psychographics.

Fox will make much more money but you can still make a lot of money if you
can find another, smaller segment. The advantages of segmentation are much
lower initial marketing cost and, potentially, lower program costs, because
you don't have to field a big, general-purpose news staff. MSNBC is a very
low-budget operation but it's profitable.

There are ways to lose by psychographic segmentation, particularly if it
defines a bad set of demographics: people over 58 and poor people. But there
are advantages, too, which are more complicated to explain.

All in all, it's a business that's about making money. If you think that the
politics are driving content management at any of the broadcast or cable
networks, think again. They just have different strategies for building
viewership.

--
Ed Huntress