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November 5, 2009
Victims, Victims Everywhere on Time Warner's HLN
Last week when I blogged about CNN falling into fourth place in the cable news channel ratings, I became a victim of my blogging – I had to watch CNN and HLN to see why HLN might beat CNN in the 25-54 ratings.
Watching CNN was numbingly boring, but not painful to watch. HLN (formerly Headline News and CNN2), however, was painful to view for more than a half-hour news cycle. The daytime anchor, Richelle Carey was as easy to watch as any carefully coiffed beauty on Fox News or Fox Business Network, and the graphics were easier on the eye and more in harmony with a news image than CNN’s (although not quite as good overall as Fox News’s graphics).
The problem was not the anchor or the graphics, but was with the story selection – the stories were all about crashes, rapes, murders, funerals, and disasters. The HLN stories offered a cornucopia of brief items with accompanying irrelevant, endlessly repeated video that would appeal to those who had the self-image of being a victim and wanted to watch stories of people suffering.
I remember reading a research study some years ago about why people like to read about or watch stories about disasters and crime. In addition to the fact the disasters usually create the opportunity for riveting video, people like to read or hear about them to feel good. They seem to say to themselves, “I’m glad that didn’t happen to me. I could be worse off than I am.”
Also, I think people who see themselves as victims like to have other victims as company. I suppose misery loves company. I suspect there is a deep need to reinforce their sense that they are victims and to confirm their persecution complex.
So I guess HLN has found its niche – victims.
The New York Times’ story titled “CNN Finishes Last in TV News on Cable” indicated that HLN in had a monthly average of 221,000 people 25-54 watching versus CNN’s 201,000. The reason the 25-54 numbers were touted is because that is the demographic preferred by advertisers, therefore the only viewers who matter.
So, of the 304 million people in the United States, I’m guessing there are about 25 million who are 25-54, which would mean that less than one percent of them watch the continuous victimization offerings of HLN. This is a small but obviously profitable niche for the Turner Broadcasting cable network (in turn owned by Time Warner).
HLN is profitable because there are marketers who target their advertising and promotion to people who feel like victims: Tax Masters goes after people who are victims of the income tax system, Humana Health Care goes after people who are victims of the health insurance system, Tylenol goes after people who are victims of old age, Long Island Hospital goes after victims of poor health, and Time Warner Cable, in its promotion spots, show people returning their Verizon phones, thus, they are victims of Verizon.
Thus, as a viewer, I couldn’t get away from the victim pitch – in the stories, in the commercials, and in the promos. There were victims, victims everywhere on HLN.
There is now a niche for victims on HLN; for angry, uneducated white men on Fox News; for dummies on Fox Business Network; for angry liberals on MSNBC; for sports fans on ESPN; for women on Oxygen; and for alien-abduction fanatics and circus lovers on CNN.
In the long tail of cable networks, appealing to ever narrower niches seems to be the prevalent strategy. UPN anyone – the Ukulele Pick Network?
Posted by Charles Warner at November 5, 2009 10:02 PM
Comments
Bruce Braun 
at November 12, 2009 8:27 PM writes:
Interesting take, Charlie.
All of the news networks have adopted the "If it bleeds, it leads" mentality of tabloid news rags. A wait in the check-out line at your local grocery store subjects one to the blare of the Globe and Inquirer.
Between all of the "Exclusive" interviews and speculations disguised as news, cable news coverage gives Hearst's yellow journalism of the 1940's and 50's a good name.
I don't understand the need in journalism today to create good guys and bad guys, even if there are neither or if both sides of a story are good or equally bad.
The Ft. Hood tragedy is just the latest in victim reporting. Of course, the people who were shot and killed or wounded are without a doubt, victims.
Unless, you are a radical Muslim and you see those fallen as deserving of death and injury and the killer as being the real victim because he was captured and will face trial by the Infidels.
We've raised the bar on political correctness to new levels with a reluctant press to call the Ft. Hood shooter what he really is and what he stands for out of fear of offending other non-radical Muslims. Would this same kid-glove approach be applied if a fundamentalist Christian committed a similar act in an abortion clinic? Radicals are radicals and crazy people are crazy, period. They are not victims of discrimination or ridicule. Using some trumped up psychological explanation that paints them as much a victim as the ones they kill or wound is a true tragedy because we are in effect lying to ourselves about the reality.
In Army Basic Training, every soldier is taught that the moment someone points a knife of a gun at you, that person has forfeited their right to live. To assume otherwise, you are taught, will most certainly result in your own death. Quite the opposite thinking in respect to the victimology mentality of the Press these days. Those poor souls who perished at Ft. Hood were all trained to think of themselves as victors and not victims.
I wonder, this Veteran's Day week what the reaction of the Press would be to Hitler, Stalin and the other butchers of history, had they lived in this generation. They'd probably be speculating about what books those monsters read, what TV shows and movies they watched, if the surfed Porn on the Internet, were abused as children, all in an attempt to "understand" what motivates or drives them to murder the innocents.
Evil, no matter what ethnic, cultural or religious place it comes from should be identified as Evil by the Press and called out for what it is. To do any less, or to go overboard with political correctness does all of us a disservice. As Edmund Burke famously said: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.