What Matters Most: Impeachment, Democracy, or "Dancing With the Stars"?

Carroll could have written the script To be sure Nunes had a bad hand to play Like a crewman on a sinking ship who tosses his bailing buckets overboard along with their contents Nunes discarded one dissembling defense of President Trump after another as the witnesses demolished the talking points on his desk But the congressman did stick with one of Carroll39s themes the art of belief which the Queen of Hearts described best when she counseled Alice quotWhy sometimesquot she said quotI39ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfastquotFor Republicans who are running out of quotthe dog ate my homeworkquot excuses for Trump39s corrupt actions more than a few undoubtedly are praying for a light at the end of the rabbit hole that Trump has tumbled them downStill Nunes39 monologues amp8212 nonsensical as they may be amp8212 did raise an important point Seeking to put down his Democratic adversaries and playing to a president who takes Fox News39 fawning as his 247 intelligence source Nunes sarcastically chided committee chairman Adam Schiff for the hearings39 low ratingsPolitical gamesmanship or not in a country divided by partisanship the ratings issue is a topic worth thinking through Indeed the constitutional process of impeaching a president is a political act Ultimately it will reflect in part how the House and Senate members read their constituents39 minds The public39s media consumption is obviously a measure of what people thinkWho39s watching is important from another perspective the growing civic illiteracy of the American population and how it might affect their views on Trump39s fate As surveys make clear significant numbers of citizens can39t identify the three branches of government much less get straight what the separation of powers means for each of their constitutional roles Add to that a growing fatigue with Trump39s crises threats supposed epochal achievements and the daily vituperation from a reality TV political leader whose language leads mothers to cover their children39s ears when he39s onair and the question is obvious At this point are Americans even watching Do they careMedia analysts statisticians and survey experts can provide sophisticated interpretations of the polling that produces television ratings for example how shows compare against each other who39s tuned in and which programs are most popular But from a simple commonsense perspective there39s a basic consideration worth contemplating Compared to viewers39 other choices at any given time of day or night do the ratings suggest anything about how a profoundly important political moment in the nation39s history stacks up in their minds compared to say reruns of Hollywood SquaresA snapshot of the first several days of the House impeachment hearings offers a glimpse of what viewing habits could suggest According to the Hollywood Reporter across the six major networks amp8212 ABC CBS CNN Fox News MSNBC and NBC amp8212 morning through early afternoon broadcasts of the first three days of hearings roughly averaged 13 million viewers Fox News had the biggest total audience in the periods when all six networks were offering coverage averaging 272 million viewers while MSNBC hit 263 million and CBS held 2 million viewers followed by ABC 193 million NBC 183 million and CNN 175 millionSo in drawing viewers how does a cast of diplomats military officers and political appointees facing a phalanx of congressmen literally doing political battle over facts and fantasies stack up against other visual fareThe comparison isn39t about teasing insights from the sophisticated measures available to media executives who parse how their content does based on time slots advertising rates or programming niches and their trends Rather it39s all about whether a program whatever its theme or the hour it shows up motivates people to reach for their remote control or pick up their smartphone to streamTake Dancing with the Stars on November 11 when Sean Spicer the former White House spokesman bid his farewell Spicer39s spins and pirouettes pulled in some 72 million total viewers the highest viewership since the program39s premiere two months earlier In other words in one evening more people watched a tangoing former White House flack than paid attention to any of the major networks broadcasting live from the political battlefield that just might determine the nation39s future The same was true for NBC39s The Voice whose performers attracted 75 million eyeballs that night besting the drawing power of the farewell for wouldbe dancing superstar SpicerAs a measure of the public39s interest Thursday night football painfully drives home the point for politicians Fox39s Thursday Night Football on November 14 played before 153 million viewers That39s 20 percent more than the average total viewership on all six networks for the impeachment hearings Last Sunday nearly 25 million peopleamp160watched New England play Philadelphia on CBS It39s no criticism of football fans or any attempt to suggest that the civicminded don39t dwell among them but the comparison with public interest in another reallife contest on Washington39s Capitol Hill shouldn39t be ignoredCompared to Watergate the IranContra hearings and the impeachment travails of President Clinton the Trump impeachment process is only beginning Public interest in a Senate trial following the certain impeachment vote in the House could well rise dramatically But expecting the future to be like the past amp8212 a public that becomes suddenly attentive and seriously engaged amp8212 rests on assumptions about viewers as well as the media that immerses them that deserve to be questionedA public less educated than its forebearers about its own democracy and institutions a media as polarized as the viewership it seeks to attract a news establishment with programming awash in opinions rather than reporting and an information environment shaped by social media that has demonstrated its inability to protect itself and the users it serves from malevolent attack amp8212 all of these factors and more suggest that the deficit in popular interest in impeachment isn39t just a challenge to the protagonists in its political battle It39s a challenge to democracy itselfPhoto courtesy of Walt Disney TelevisionClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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What Matters Most: Impeachment, Democracy, or "Dancing With the Stars"?

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Kent M. Harrington

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