Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis - A "Shock and Awe" Special: The Decline of TV

Episode Date: November 26, 2023

Bill looks at the overall decline of television with Bernie Goldberg and John Stossel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The decline, and it is dramatic, of the American television industry, not just news, but programming and everything else. First, I want to give you this stat. So 10 years ago, that's a good litmus test, right? CBS Network had about 12 million people on average watching it every day. About 12 million, 10 years ago. Now it's got 6, 50% off. NBC had 7 million people, 10 years. years ago, now it's got four. Fox had seven million people, now it's got four and a half million. ABC had eight million, ten years ago, now it's got four. Another drop by 50%. In the morning, which is the big revenue driver for these corporations that own NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox. In the morning,

Good Morning America, had five million people watching it five years ago. Now it's got three million. Today show at 4 million people, now it's got 3 million. CBS morning at 2.5 million. Now it's got about 2 million. Okay, so you see in a morning, that's coming down as well. What is going up is the age of the people watching television. All right? So it's older people, people who traditionally watch. They got the clicker in one hand, the martini and the other. And that's how they consume television, okay? But the younger people below 50 got, generally speaking. Late night is the worst. So you remember that 10 years ago, Jay Leno was the host of the Tonight Show. Remember that. He had $3.5 million a night. Fallon took it over. He's got $1.3 million a

night. That's a drastic drop. All right. The Late Show, David Letterman. Got 3 million a night 10 years ago. The guy took over, Colbert's got 2 million a night. Kimmel on ABC. 10 years ago, ABC was doing Nightline. Nightline was doing about 2.5 million. Now Kimmel is 1 million. And falling, he's going to fall below a million. And they just signed him. ABC. he just signed him. It's like when I was in competitive network and cable TV, if you went down to radio, he was, whoa, you got. Now, why is this important to your life? Well, let's think back to the history of American television. When it first came on the scene in the 1950s, it was the town square. So people from Seattle to Key West all at something in common. Milton Burrell, Lucille Ball,

Hands up. All in a Family later on. These shows everybody watched. Everybody could talk about. There was a commonality in the culture. I don't want to be a pinhead here, but you know what I'm talking about. A show like All in a Family broke around because it made fun of bigotry. It exposed bigotry, and then it made fun of it because of the great talents of Carol O'Connor, Archie Bunker. MASH another one. days, Mary Tyler Moore on the women's front. So all of these programs, everybody knew about that. Can you name four? And don't get me dancing with the stars or the Desert Island show. No. Can you give me an entertainment show that you believe you could talk to somebody about and lives a thousand miles away from you? Now? I tried to watch this new CBS show last night,

East New York because I like Blue Bloods. Blue Bloods is the only network show that I watch because the writing is good and the cast is great. So East New York, this is CBS trying to duplicate his success of Blue Bloods, but in a liberal way. So they bring in a woke precinct commander and a police. It was okay. It was okay, but would I watch it again?

No. It wasn't anything in there. that, to use the cliche, the kids like, spoke to me. I didn't care whether the commander of the precinct was liberal. It doesn't matter of me. I wanted a good story, a compelling 60-minute watch. And on 60 Minutes, okay, used to be my go-to program. Every week, I watch 60 Minutes when it was produced by Don Hewitt and then later Jeff Fager.

And every week I would watch out. I didn't watch the violin things at the time. the end with Morley Safer, the guy playing a flute. But I watched most of it. And it was good. Now I never watch it. Once they fired Fager for nothing at CBS, they're showing, and that is one of the reasons that television is in decline, the lack of talent. Talent drives this medium. Johnny Carson. I mean, Leno and Letterman, we're talented. I know, I know Fallon and Kimmel and Colbert is the worst. I can't even talk to him without like this.

But Fallon and Kimball are talented. I mean, they're not that level. They're not even close to that level. The morning shows, they used to have people who were interesting. Now is, hey, you know, I got some kale I want to tell you about me. I don't really need to know about the kale. Let's face it, the U.S. economy is under stress. National debt rising, trade war, shaking the markets.

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Hey, I'm Caitlin Becker, the host of the New York Postcast, and I've got exactly what you need to start your weekdays. Every morning, I'll bring you the stories that matter, plus the news people actually talk about. The juicy details in the worlds of politics, business, pop culture, and everything in between. It's what you want from the New York Post wrapped up in one snappy show. Ask your smart speaker to play the NY Postcast podcast. Listen and subscribe on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So the cumulative effect of this is then fracturing the culture of America. So we're no longer united by the town square of television.

And news, you know what happened in news. I mean, I'm on my own independent news agency, Bill O'Reilly.com, and I thank God every day. I don't have to work for a corporation anymore because the corporations are not giving you the news straight. You know that. Everybody knows it. There's no two sides of the story. So I got two guests tonight to talk about this. You've heard me.

I bloveted for six minutes and 38 seconds. So the first guy is Bernie Goldberg, and Bernie Goldberg is a news guy. He's been around forever. And the second guy is John Stossel, and he's a news guy. He's been around forever. I don't know. I think Goldberg's a little older than Stossel, but they're both old. But they both know a lot.

They know a lot because they came into it when it was hot. so Bernie Goldberg has won 14 Emmy Awards 14 I have only won three now there's a reason but we don't want to get into that he wrote a best-selling book bias a CBS insider exposes how the media distorts the news we all remember that he was a producer correspondent for CBS News for 28 years I I lasted at CBS about eight months before I just couldn't do it all right but ABC I had a much better 10 you're over there. And he was a correspondent for real sports with Brian Gumbull. Remember Bryant on HBO for 22 years? So Goldberg has seen it all, done it all, and here he is. So first I want you to comment on my monologue. What did you think of it? I think you're mostly right. I'm going to take issue with one point on a matter of degree, but only a matter of degree. First, let me say, you watch one network show, so do I. Mine is Sunday night football.

And if it wasn't for sports on network television, I think the ratings would be even lower. They would be. Absolutely, would be. So let me tell you what I agree with. Television ratings are down, and they've been going down for a number of years now. Therefore, ad revenues, which are crucial, are also down. the audience that is literally unfortunately but literally dying off is not being replaced by younger viewers they are going to other places they're going to other platforms like Netflix and things like

that the future of television as one wise guy wrote it is beyond channel 13 it's not a growth industry. So I agree with you on all of that. But let me just take issue with a matter of degree on one thing. Just as Mark Twain said that reports of his demise are greatly exaggerated. Don't plan a funeral service for ABC, NBC or CBS anytime soon. They have millions and millions of viewers. Not as many millions, as you rightly said, as not too long ago. But the they still have millions of viewers. They're not winning awards. Those are going to other places.

But they have enough viewers that they'll be around for a while. That's my only... All right, but what about the relevance of the viewing public? So there's no longer any commonality brought to us by entertainment on the three networks, none. And you can go for Netflix, but every time I go on Netflix, it's not that I want to watch there. I don't know. I'm difficult. I understand.

I'd rather read. But I look at this stuff that's being produced. It's a lot of woke nonsense, a lot of cheap stuff that doesn't teach me anything. But yeah, you're right. It's not going to go dark. You still be able to turn on a network and then there'll be an image there. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't have any cultural impact at all.

Let me say something that just shocks me. You stumble onto a very smart point. I can't believe I'm saying this. I can't, but it really is a smart point that television, I think the term used to be the town square. The term I've used is it used to be the National Cathedral. When John Kennedy was assassinated, everybody turned to network television. They watched the same thing at the same time. That's a very valuable experience for a nation, because

in the absence of that, and I think this is your main point, the absence of that means we're not as cohesive as a nation as we were when television was either the town square or the National Cathedral and then brought us all together. Right. So when you have a Balkanization of the country where there is no accepted behavioral scale, progressives want to dismantle Judeo-Christian tradition, they've been fairly successful recently in doing that, then you have every man and woman for themselves. That makes it much harder to run an effective country. But it's almost as if I don't want to blame television for this. Two major factors are contributing to what you correctly describe. One, as I said, is the viewers are getting older, and when they die off, they're not being replaced.

but the other bill is that once upon a time there were only three places television was only two and a half places NBC CBS and sort of ABC that was television just as once upon a time you could only get your phone service from AT&T or you can only buy a car from Ford or Chevrolet basically basically now it's not just NBC ABC and CBS and cable there are a million other places. So the combination of older people dying off and not being replaced and the fact that we have so many more places to go, whether they're good or not is another issue. I don't know any, I don't know about you, but I don't know any younger person. And I mean this literally. I have kids. I speak to them. I know other younger people. None of them watch network television. None of them do. And again, that that divide. us. And look, the only thing Americans have in common now, think about this, is our national

holidays. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July. And that's it. And those are controversial. Well, they're trying to tear them down. They being the progressive movement because it's love of country, love of Jesus. Can't have that. And then the founder. who, the pilgrims who came over and shot every Indian they could, according to the Progressive. So why are you reading Turkey? I don't even know if we have Columbus Day anymore. What do they call it now? Having in some places indigenous people's Day.

And Christmas, as you've described quite accurately, that's a federal holiday, by the way, right? Yeah, U.S. Grant. And yet that's a controversial holiday. So if you're right that all we have to. bring us together our national holidays. We don't even have that. We're losing that. So this is not a good thing for the American culture. You know, McLuhan said that television is a vast wasteland. But before he died, he said, except for O'Reilly and Goldberg. I don't know whether you know that or not. It wasn't fluent. It wasn't the chairman of the FCC,

whose name escaped. But it wasn't... Well, whoever it was amended it that O'Reilly and Goldberg were okay. But everything else was a vast wasteland. But the vast wasteland, and I'm going to give you the last word on this, actually helped the culture. We actually had something in common. We lo like the Fonz.

Last word. I was at a bar mitzvah with the Fons once. true story he's a good guy Winkler I know him he's a good guy right whether it was happy days or all in the family or

MASH or Mary Tyler Moore or Huntley Brinkley or Kronkite we had something in common some of those things and those are the best those are the best of what we had in common that was also my mother the car

Right? Love that. There was garbage on television, too. But there was no other place to go, so we were together. That's right. In our misery of watching Gilligan's Island, we were together. And there's something to be said for that. All right, Bernie Goldberg, everyone.

He is on Bernardgoldberg.com. You have to go there, or he'll come to your house, and you don't want that. Bernard Goldberg.com. Thanks, Bernie. Appreciate it. See you, Bill. Power, politics, and the people behind the headlines. I'm Miranda Devine, New York Post columnist, and the host of the brand new podcast, Podforce One. Every week, I'll sit down for candid conversations with Washington's most powerful disruptors, lawmakers, newsmakers, and even the president of the United States. These are the leaders shaping the future of America and the world.

Listen to Podforce One with me, Miranda Devine, every week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. You don't want to miss an episode. Hey, it's Sean Spicer from the Sean Spicer Show podcast, reminding you to tune into my show every day to get your daily dose inside the world of politics. President Trump and his team are shaking up Washington like never before. and we're here to cover it from all sides, especially on the topics the mainstream media won't. So if you're a political junkie on a late lunch or getting ready for the drive home, new episodes of the Sean Spicer Show podcast drop at 2 p.m. East Coast every day. Make sure you tune in. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast.

So I want to bring in a guy who has seen it all. He's not as old as Goldberg and me, but he's close. He's rapidly gaining. You know, I'm John Stossel, 19 Emmys, Peabody Award winner, very impressive, honors all over the place. In fact, the Dallas Morning News called him, quote, the most consistently thought-provoking TV reporter of our time. Apparently, the Dallas Point News never watched me. But anyway, Stossel is a big name and has been around a long time and our paths across many times. And he operated mostly on the network level at 2020 and Good Morning America. So let's start there.

Your alma mater, 2020, I guess that's still on the air, right? But I don't watch it. Do you know anybody who watches it? No, and it's just stupid when I do. Why is it stupid? Because instead of covering issues that matters to me, it's the sex murder of the week. this silly celebrity thing. It started to change when the cable networks came,

because people who wanted news would go to CNN or Fox or MS and no longer get much news from the networks. Okay, so then I went into 48 hours format of crime de jour. Now, we have given the stats that are irrefutable that the network entertainment, the shows that used to bind us all together, the Town Square shows, got. Now what we have is tribalism in this country.

Each tribe does what they want or whatever. And I think it's a bad thing for America. Do you disagree? Well, it's good and bad. What we had before was just liberalism light for everybody. and that wasn't great and now at least you can get more thoughtful stuff but by large i agree with bernie and you it's changed a lot of it's for the worse and the algorithm i would add to it that's a big problem because i get my much of my news from my facebook feed or my twitter feed and it just

feeds me more of either what i already believe or what'll piss me me off and get me to watch a little longer. The algorithm notices if you watch a quarter of a second longer on this or that, and it gives you more of that. And so if you're crazy and are being fed crazy conspiracy theories, you'll just get more of them and you'll believe them harder. But why have people gone away from the network programming, late night, morning, prime time, that used to be powerful programs there that people would flock to? Now there don't seem to be any more powerful programs. Is it a talent thing?

What is it? We have a million choices. When I was on the network, I got 10 million viewers, about three times what you were getting on Fox. Because people only had about five stations to pick from. Now we've got 500. But there's got to be something more to that. if you're good and you're provocative and you're delivering a product that's worthy that helps people or entertains people to find you.

But more and more, they're not even looking. Younger people don't watch the networks. You know that. They never even sample unless they want to go dancing with the stars. It seems to me that this is just a collapse across the board. And the Disney's of the world, the Comcasts of the world, CBS, they know it's a collapse. It's like the last days of Pompeii. And they just not spending a lot of money.

It's woke all over the place. You can't even get anything produced unless you go into a certain category. All of this is just coming in to destroy the last remnants of what once bound the country together. Well, these may be the last remnants, but they're still spending money. And there are good people who are commentations. Look, you attracted the biggest audience on cable TV for a long time because you're really good at it. If you still only got 4 million people in a country of 330 million people. And when you say in the old days, everybody was watching the same stuff, it was about 30 million people out of 330 million.

So it never was this big fireplace that we all sat around. left Fox because my son convinced me the networks are dead and this was five, six years ago and you got millions of Twitter followers and Facebook you don't need a network anymore and if you want to reach young people and convince them

that less government's good Fox isn't going to help you I mean half of their ratings. I agree. The thing about the O'Reilly factor that was the driver of the power was we would do in the two runs five between

five and six million. You'll never see that again on any cable. But we also were out, all of our clips were out everywhere. So as soon as I'd say something stupid, which was pretty much every night, the clip of O'Reilly saying something stupid just went all over the world. Now that happens now, too. I'm more famous now than I was when I was at Fox because of Facebook, because everything goes out on Facebook and people don't watch the whole show, but they watch certain parts that they clickbait them into watch. But I submit to you, that when you and I were at ABC, we were there together, and I was at CBS with Goldberg. The talent level was so much better at the network news than it is now, and Johnny Carson

was a thousand times better than Jimmy Fallon, and that David Letterman was 10,000 times better than Colbert. And when you have inferior talent, then you're going to lose, and I think that's what's killed it. I think that's what's killed it. I disagree. I think you're just old and you like those old comedians more. You don't think Carson, you think Fallon's as talented as Johnny Carson? You just sit there and tell me that? No, Fallon is not. But go watch those old Carson shows or any of them. They're not so brilliant. It wasn't, that was good. Mary Tyler Moore, that ensemble cast, the MASH ensemble cast, even the Happy Days with Winkler, it's fine. They were light years ahead in creativity and talent and what they have on now.

I'm sorry, and you're right, go look, go compare. I think with all the choices we have on Amazon and Netflix, there's talent that equals them. do the ratings are down because because you got a million choices and you're nobody wants to sit through a commercial anymore and watch a whole hour show i'm shocked i i have sampled netflix and all this is very little i mean i watch that thing peeky blinders there was talent there was talent on that show um but that's you know i watch this other stuff and as a kid say it doesn't speak to me now you're right i'm old i'm over the hill I can't do anything anymore.

I probably can't even remember. I'm kind of like Joe Biden. I'm looking for dead people. All that's probably true. But I'll tell you what. You put on you and me and our prime on ABC and our reportage, what you did and what I did. There's nobody on there now that can do that stuff.

I'm sorry, there isn't. I disagree. I'm sure there is, though I can't name the people. Yeah, they're. One other difference is that with Cecil TV and these videos I send out, I do what I did in 2020. I interview people for a while or argue with them or go out and shoot things, and then I edit 90% of it out. So you only get the good stuff, the boring stuff goes. But you did that at 2020.

At 2020, I did that. You did that at 20-20. I mean, that's, but there's nothing wrong with that. But you're very different. You're live. You someone who managed to talk for a full hour and make it interesting. I can only do that by cutting stuff out. But I think that's an improvement.

It lets me research things for a week. But the difference is, Dossel, that you were passionate about what you did, particularly as a consumer reporter. So you saw some of the- Well, these crazy lefties are passionate about what they're doing as mindless socialists. Yeah, but there's a different motivation. You wanted to present truth to the folks. They want to overthrow the government.

That's a different thing. So you can be a crazy activist or a reporter who has a drive to uncover information that helps the country. And you don't see much of that anymore. This cable stuff on all of them. You learn anything from now when you tune in, do you learn anything from those presentations rarely rarely is right i rarely watch and i rarely learn much but if you did learn you would watch if you learned stuff you didn't know you would watch i figure it'll come to me on my facebook feed or my twitter account well that's misguided

because whatever's coming to you isn't anything that's been vetted so you're in raw information no editor there saying give me your two sources like it was at ABC God help us if we made a mistake a factual mistake when we were at ABC News God help us now they're oh you know hey you know the difference you've seen deterioration yes but you could make liberal mistakes at ABC and they would let those go they didn't consider them a mistake I think figure my Facebook friends are vetting, maybe better than the ABC lawyers were. When I was doing a story on how bad rent control is, how compared to bombing a city,

it's maybe worse as far as destroying the housing stock. And the lawyers at ABC says, this can't be true. It's good for poor people. It can't hurt poor people, like you say. And they fought me tooth and nail. when Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson did silly environmental stories, they didn't check those. So it was subject to bias then too. No, I can't disagree with that.

I work for Dan Rather. You could see it every day with him what he did. But the skill level, and this is the last question, I believe that America is the ultimate competitive capitalist society on the planet. To succeed, Sossel, you have to deliver a product the audience wants, and you have to be damn good to do it. And what's happened is the mediocrity that comes all the way down from the moguls who run Disney and Comcast and CBS and Fox. The mediocrity that's accepted has killed the goose. Last word. Goose is still flap on its wings.

they're still making money i get my money from donations from viewers uh there are more ways to make money now to support yourself and that's good and yeah i don't like that stuff but also i don't just want to watch the stuff i agree with no i don't either but i i lament the lack of town square uh the lack of quality it has deteriorated markedly now where can people find you uh so they can give you money to also because I want you to upgrade your wardrobe a little. You know me. I'm looking out for you. I appreciate that.

John Sossel.com is good enough. I release a new video every Tuesday. All right. And you don't compete with Bill O'Reilly.com because we do it every day. Stossel kind of semi-retard. You know, he's a man of leisure. No, I'm working harder than you, but I edit. I edit the bloviating hour.

If I did that, I disappear. You would. so thanks for helping us out we really appreciate it