Ratings and use rates for all sorts of media outlets is plummeting as more Americans are tuning out than ever.
Social media engagement of news articles has fallen by half over last year, and cable viewing, news media app use, and visitors to top news websites are down an average of 17 percent.
Per Axios:
Engagement with news content across all platforms declined significantly in the first half of 2022.
- Cable viewership across the three major cable news networks — CNN,
- Fox News and MSNBC — is, on average, down 19% in prime time for the first half of this year compared to the first half of 2021. Those losses skew heavily toward CNN and MSNBC, which are down 47% and 33%, respectively. Fox’s ratings are up 12% in that six-month span.
- News app sessions for the top 12 mainstream most-trafficked publishers dropped 16% in the first half of 2022, according to data from Apptopia.
- Website visits for the top 5 news websites in the U.S. by unique visits tracked by Similarweb dropped 18% in the first half of 2022.
- Engagement on social media with news articles cratered over the past six months, dropping 50% since the first half of last year, despite more articles published, according to data from Newswhip. Engagement is measured by interactions with articles posted, which includes likes, comments and shares.
Axios added, “Interest in news among those surveyed in the U.S. fell 12 percentage points from 55% last year to 43% in 2022.”
This reflects the fact that the media is one of the least trusted institutions in the nation. And deservedly so.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston
Tags: Commentary
Join the conversation!
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse.