Down By Half

The demise of the Pravda and Izvestia media is in full swing.

CNN continued what has become a precipitous decline in ratings for its prime-time programs in the first quarter of 2010, with its main hosts losing almost half their viewers in a year.

But the news is not all bad for them. Some of it is much worse.

Fox News had their best year of all time in 2009. Now that we’ve finished the first quarter of 2010, it’s clear FNC is showing no signs of letting up –they just finished their best quarter ever, in total day total viewers.

It was also the second highest rated quarter ever in prime time total viewers.

First the viewers go. Then the advertisers. The fact that Fox news is rising proves it is not the media. It is the message.

And that is not the only place where the message is ruining the media. The newspaper business is also troubled by a Death Watch. Time is not on their side. Well maybe the magazine is. But - No Fear. There is a magazine Death Pool too.

Think of my little magazine here. Depending on how you count it I gather 140,000 eyeballs a year. Or take the other place I blog, Classical Values. About 1,100,000 eyeballs a year. Nothing special really. But time is limited. And every minute a reader spends here is a minute not available for other media. After a while and with enough alternatives it is going to hurt. And hurt big.

I'm reminded of the Marxist long march through the institutions.

To few Americans is Antonio Gramsci a familiar name. That is to be regretted because the work of the late Italian Marxist sheds much light on our time. It was he who first alerted fellow revolutionaries to the possibility that they would be able to complete the seizure of political power only after having achieved "cultural hegemony," or control of society's intellectual life by cultural means alone.

Well they gained control of the culture all right. In fact they have strangled it to death. Good for them. They now control a corpse. And if you have watched Weekend at Bernie'syou know just how much trouble it is trying to keep a corpse animated.

Cross Posted at Classical Values