Ratings-Driven Quotes

It's CNN who really should hold Trump accountable. And because they are trading the short-term fix of increased ratings by focusing on Trump drama - and I'm not saying they shouldn't cover the Russian investigations, of course they should - but the blanket coverage, it's not about news values. It is about ratings. And it comes at a tremendous cost because Trump supporters are fully defended against this. As far as they're concerned, this is a vast conspiracy, it's fake news, it doesn't impact their daily lives, it makes them see Trump as a victim, which he wants to be seen as.

The news is a public service. It's a way to inform people of what's going on in their world. And when you make it about ratings and make it about ad dollars, there's no incentive to inform people. The incentive is to be sensationalistic and get as many people to watch as you can without any regard for truth or objectivity.

What MSNBC is, what cable news prime time has become in the shows that get the ratings, is the oped page of the newspaper.

People have no morals, I swear to God. The things that people do for ratings! It's unforgivable.

When you talk about President Trump, the cable networks turned over so many hours of prime time to him. Why? Because he was entertaining, but also because it drove ratings. And that is different from what the news media is supposed to focus on.

At root, vulgar just means popular on a mass scale. It is the semantic opposite of pretentious or snobby. It is humility with a comb-over. It is Nielsen ratings and Barnum's axiom and the real bottom line. It is big, big business.

The news media are, for the most part, the bringers of bad news... and it's not entirely the media's fault, bad news gets higher ratings and sells more papers than good news.

Here's what I know about the business I am in. It's all based on money. It's all based on ratings.

Every single television product has the ambition to chase ratings, every one of them. Many have other ambitions, for many, ratings are not #1. But my experience on TV, and on the entertainment side, has been entirely ratings-based. When I look at TV I look at ratings. And I never second guess ratings. Never.

Who elected Larry King America's grief counselor? We, the viewing public, did, by driving up his ratings whenever somebody famous passes.

We need to look to our laurels a bit with television in this country. I don't think enough risks are being taken in drama television in the U.K., and I think a lot of programme makers are underestimating the intelligence of the viewing public, basing it all on ratings.

I think 'Y&R's future is contingent upon the ratings. Obviously, none of the soaps are kept alive for the sake of loyalty. It's all about ratings. It's show business. Period.

I think, today, television is asking too many loaded questions, pushing further for ratings.

My job is to benefit the listeners first and foremost, entertain the listeners first and foremost, and to get ratings. You can't get ratings without listeners. So I wanna do things that the listeners enjoy, even though you may hate me for it or you may love me for that.

In Congress, that putatively deliberative body, debates devolve into stand-offs between sets of talking points — no different than the hammed-up exchanges between cable-news commentators, but with even worse ratings.