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Two kinds of people have cable news on all the time-people overly interested in politics and people in the news business. Nobody else has it on at all. This allows the first two groups to fulfill their mutual ideal, obsessing about each other without having to pretend they think about their alleged audiences.

A New Republic staffer wrote yesterday the Kerry whirligig of sound "took a whole vital half-day of the cable news cycle" away from the Democrats only a week before the election.

Dude, back away from the laptop. You've got to get out more. Out where there's light, and happy people, and nobody's watching cable news. Ever.

Back in the day, say 2001-2, people did watch cable news-if there was a local or international emergency, like 9/11 or an earthquake. The Internet and its new YouTube hench idea are killing that audience. Nobody even uses cable for a quick headline grab anymore, a very good thing for Nancy Grace and her agent. Something has to fill up 24 hours of airtime.

Here are some numbers that reveal cable news place in the national information system. Despite some recent slippage, the most popular cable news show, by far, remains Bill O'Reilly's hour of disjointed bluster on Fox. In a nation of 300 million people, it draws about 3 million viewers a night, or 1 of every 100 people it COULD reach.

My former employer, the Boston Herald, is an anachronistic second newspaper. It's in dire straits financially, a representative of what's wrong with an industry anyone in cable news will tell you is dying a slow and painful death.

Greater Boston has a population of something over 3 million. The poor, dying Herald SELLS slightly over 200,000 copies a day.

Do the ratios. One in 100 Americans watch O'Reilly for free. One in 15 Bostonians pay to read the Herald. Cable news' influence is a product of its own mind and the inherent insecurity of those who live by the ballot box.

People watch cable. They watch sports, children's shows, wrestling, old movies, and Comedy Central in that order. If SpongeBob offers an opinion on Iraq this weekend, THAT might cost somebody a vital cycle.

posted by Michael Gee @ 6:20 PM