CBS News anchor Scott Pelley’s comments to Deadline over the weekend comparing cable and network news has been fodder on Fox News today. First, here’s part of the Q&A:
DEADLINE: While the news flow on cable may be in the hundreds of thousands, a lot of people are watching Bill O’Reilly, a couple of million a night. Same thing with Hannity.
PELLEY: We measure our audience in millions. They’re not big numbers. People talk about cable a lot and cable has a very high profile. Not a lot of people watch cable news, they just don’t. If you look at the Nielsen numbers, the cable channels have a few hundred thousand viewers at any given moment. The CBS Evening News again has 7 million viewers, ABC has 8 million viewers. Brian [NBC’s Williams] has almost 9 million. Altogether we have about 25 million viewers on any given night. That’s a very different order of magnitude.
Advertisement
The story was discussed on “Fox & Friends” this morning and again on Megyn Kelly’s show. Kelly, in a discussion with Michelle Malkin, says Pelley answering that question by dismissing a fact in it, does a disservice to his audience. She also took a jab at Pelley: “We beat you in all the debates and on election night, Scott.”
You can bet former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg will have a few things to say about it tonight on his regular Monday night “O’Reilly Factor” appearance.
(h/t J$P)