Chris Wallace: snubbed, whiney
Chris Wallace is not amused. When President Obama appears on five — count ‘em, FIVE — Sunday shows tomorrow (he’ll be on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” NBC’s “Meet the Press,” ABC’s “This Week,” CNN’s Sunday show starring John King and will be the first U.S. president to appear on Univision’s Sunday program “Al Punto,”) one stop he won’t be making is “Fox News Sunday,” starring Chris Wallace. Well, I can’t put it any better than the folks at Media Matters:
The insult is obvious and poor Chris Wallace is not handling it well. He’s alternating between feeling sorry himself and taking every opportunity to lash out wildly at the administration. (Gee, think the WH hit a nerve w/ its Wallace snub?)
Here’s the funny part, though. During one pity party session, a Fox News host claimed Obama was skipping out on “the highly-rated Fox News Sunday.”
Watch the whine for yourself, in which he calls the Obama White House “the biggest bunch of babies” he’s ever seen. Project much, Christopher? Chris, a guest on Bill-O’s Fun House, even tries to pimp his straight news/network pedigree to argue that Barack Obama ought to grace the pretend news network whose top rated host has accused him of “hating white people,” and whose entire lineup, from morning through primetime and on into the night, is dedicated to trashing not only the administration, but the president personally, seven days a week (with the occasional break for true crime stories and busty, conservative celebrities…) with his presence… (maybe Chris wanted the chance to yell “you lie!” at the prez…)
The funniest part is, Wallace and O’Reilly make it sound like Chris has ratings like Hannity or Glenn Beck or for that matter, Bill O’Reilly. In short: he doesn’t. Wallace hosts the bottom — and I do mean BOTTOM-rated Sunday talk program, meaning that the president can get more viewers in ten minutes on Univision than he could scrounge with half an hour on Wallace’s casting couch.
Per TVNewser, here are the ratings for all of the Sunday shows last week:
| Network | Program | Total Viewers |
A25-54 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NBC | “Meet the Press” | 2.92M | 1.02M |
| ABC | “This Week” | 2.59M | 700K |
| CBS | “Face the Nation” | 2.51M | 860K |
| FOX | “Fox News Sunday” | 1.21M | 420K |
Even with the Gregory slide, “Meet the Press” consistently brings in 5 million viewers per airing, and just as nightly news combined can deliver a 20 million-viewer audience, as opposed to 3 million for even the best night for any single Fox News show (though they did reach 4 million for the president’s address to Congress, that’s still 1 million fewer viewers than you get from MTP…) Fox just doesn’t deliver the audience that the president’s team was looking for.
As for Univision, Wallace may dismiss it as a venue for the president to make his case, but Univision happens to be THE top rated television or cable network in the U.S., with a viewership that dwarfs the elderly, angry cohort that tunes in to Fox, in any daypart or day of the week:
Univision became the most watched network in America among 18-34s last week. Following Nielsen’s decision to combine Spanish-language and Anglophone ratings into a single national count, it turns out Univision did… damn good:
Univision had 11% more viewers than Fox. Univision beat ABC by 43%, CBS by 42% and NBC by 57%. Univision had a staggering 125% advantage on CW.
And the ratings for Al Punto beat FNC’s Wallace consistently, Sunday after Sunday in a key demo:
Al Punto (531,000) does better than FNS (417,000) in the all-important 18-49 demographic (and has done so for the last 10 months), and it often beats CBS’ Face the Nation in that demo as well.
Not to mention the importance of Hispanic voters, who Republicans are jettisoning in droves, particularly after Joe “You Lie” Wilson ramped up the anti-immigrant fever again (with Lou Dobbs riding shotgun) and whom Democrats are alone, at this point, in appreciating.
And then there’s this: FOX NEWS VIEWERS HAVE ALREADY MADE UP THEIR MINDS about this president’s health reform plans, and about this president, thanks to the hysteria-laced lies, about FEMA concentration camps, “death panels,” Communists, Marxists and of course, the always hilarious “oligar-hy…” that Fox News mainlines into their withering veins night and day. What good do Chris and Bill (who even put his whine into a column…) think it would do for Barack Obama to subject himself to ten minutes of Wallace quizzing him on why he wants to kill off old people for the amusement of 1 million birthers, Palinites and Ron Paul/militia weirdos? Yeah, I’d turn that down, too. Obama wants to speak to persuadable Americans tomorrow, who may be on the fence regarding healthcare, or who still may have some questions to clear up in their own minds about the process or the content of the eventual bill. That’s the only reason to book a solid Sunday block. Appearing on Fox would have been nothing more than a stunt, just to prove he could sit through it, not to mention an opportunity to provide fresh meat for Hannity, Beck, O’Reilly and company to trash all next week.
BTW, the loudmouths at Fox will trash the interviews and the president all next week, all year and until the day his second term ends anyway, without Obama having to pretend to respect Ruperts little shop of horrors as a news outlet by granting them an interview.
Meanwhile: Media Matters compiles 100 days of “Fair and Balanced” on Fox (spoiler alert: Chris Wallace? You’re in there!)… believe it or not, this is the coverage from the first 100 days of Obama’s presidency, before Fox REALLY got going this summer. Watch:
Yeah. Hold your breath for that interview, fellas.
UPDATE: Just to further press the point: guess who Wallace WILL have on tomorrow? The head of ACORN. Nuff said.
UPDATE 2: Apparently, the whining continued Sunday.
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