Mediaite vs. Van Susteren…

Mediaite’s Nando Di Fino returns Greta Van Susteren’s fire…

First, the obvious: her program beats Cooper’s in every accepted ratings measure. So, according to Van Susteren’s reasoning, that must be the the headline every night or there is some sort of collusion on our part. But what’s even sadder for her journalistic credibility is that she ignored several footnotes and qualifiers about how Fox News regularly wins the ratings. She took the story completely out of context and did so with an almost purposeful ignorance. She also shows herself to be not much of a team player since the story also pointed out that FNC’s Red Eye, which airs at 3 a.m., bested prime time shows on CNN and MSNBC.

In fact, looking at our most recent ratings stories, Van Susteren’s theory that CNN gets some sort of special treatment is quickly eviscerated.

HEADLINE: Lawrence O’Donnell (MSNBC) is up. NUGGETS: Nancy Grace has a good night, Bill O’Reilly (FNC) is strong, Mike Huckabee’s (FNC) GOP Forum had great ratings.

HEADLINE: Piers Morgan wins the CNN slate. NUGGETS: Red Eye beat every non-FNC program in the demo, O’Donnell was the highest MSNBC show, Van Susteren finished a relatively-high third on her network, Joy Behar had the best ratings on HLN.

HEADLINE: Re-Airs rule the night. NUGGETS: MSNBC had a strong night overall, HLN’s Special Report had miserable numbers.

HEADLINE: CNN’s debate gives them a win; Cooper benefits from lead-in. NUGGETS: HLN had a bad night, Rachel Maddow had the highest-rated MSNBC show, Joy Behar had the lowest-rated show in the demo.

HEADLINE: Fox News and MSNBC dominate the night. NUGGETS: Maddow inches close to beating O’Reilly’s repeat, only three HLN shows posted six-digits in the demo, John King (CNN) dipped below six figures in the demo.

HEADLINE: Joy Behar has a great night. NUGGETS: Ed Schultz and Maddow came close to the million-viewer mark in overall ratings, Nancy Grace was again strong, Maddow gets close to O’Reilly’s repeat.

I’m not going to weigh in on Van Susteren’s motivation, inferred or otherwise, for penning her criticisms. Franky, I really don’t care. But Van Susteren and I agree on one point: we don’t like Mediaite’s ratings summaries and headlines. We just get to that position from completely different starting points.

Consider:

These ratings posts are meant to take a rather boring subject — Nielsen numbers — and give an opinion on them, while injecting some fun and keeping them relatively loose. They’re overwhelmingly positive, opting to highlight surges as opposed to just focusing on dips and disasters (which of course, happens, as well).

Ratings data is not fun. It is not supposed to be fun. It is supposed to be boring data. When you take the boring and try to spiff it up to make it less boring invariably you end up skewing the true meaning of ratings vis a vis how significant an event it really is. You focus in too much on the micro at the expense of the far more important macro. Worse, you start aping a cable news PR department by doing their work for them. Read those headlines. They look like they were written by a PR department even though they weren’t. Micro surges look great in print but are unimportant for the long term…and when I say long term I mean really long term; more than a couple of months. It’s a colossal waste of time to be talking about this surge and that surge, this cratering and that cratering, when, averaged out for the long haul, those spikes and dips disappear and a true demonstrable ratings trend takes shape. When you achieve this kind of ratings enlightenment you realize that talking about ratings spikes and dips in banner grabbing headlines is the equivalent of eating junk food…it tastes good but it isn’t very filling and isn’t good for your health long term.

And yes, before anyone bothers to point it out, years ago I used to occasionally do highlights and lowlights in the ratings. But I eventually realized I was just doing what the PR departments themselves would do if they had the time and resources to do it. Not wanting to be an inadvertent accomplice for the cable networks, I stopped. I wish Mediaite would stop because they’re smarter than that.