By AllahPundit, HotAir.com:
I can give you a theory for why Fox News and MSNBC each get more positive buzz than CNN. I’m not sure I can give you a theory for the particular trendline for CNN.
That graph charts responses to the question “If you’ve heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?” First off, note how rare it is for any of the networks to be net positive in buzz. Fox and CNN have each managed the feat only twice, and briefly at that, over the past 14 months. MSNBC has never managed it. Note too how competitive the three networks were for most of last year — until election time, when perception of CNN’s brand fell off the table. It recovered a bit for awhile in December but struggled to stay above -10 and has begun to sink again lately. How come? If the answer is as simple as “They’re loudly anti-Trump,” why isn’t MSNBC’s buzz garbage too?
Theory: Fox and MSNBC do better than CNN because each aims squarely at a different group of ardent partisans. Fox will always get thumbs up from conservatives and MSNBC will always get thumbs up from liberals, so perceptions of their brand have a built-in buoyancy. CNN, the (supposedly) least ideological network, has no similar cheering section so when people hear something about them in the news, odds are it’s due to some controversy — maybe Trump attacking the network, maybe something the network got wrong, maybe an interview that went sideways. Negative perceptions end up overwhelming positive ones. But … why would CNN’s brand rating have been similar to Fox’s and MSNBC’s for so much of last year and then crumbled right around election day?
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