With rise of Egypt, Glenn Beck’s popularity falls

In response to the Egyptian uprising, Glenn Beck is getting crazier and more extreme than ever with predictions of  a worldwide conflagration and implosion.

Beck’s apocalyptic and deeply racist vision sees the rise of an Islamic “caliphate” or republic joined by “Marxists” in Europe and Asia. In his own words “When you take the Marxists and combine it with radicals of Islam … the whole world starts to implode.”

Interestingly, Beck’s extremism coincides with a big drop in his January ratings – the largest dip for a cable TV show.  Deadline Hollywood writes, “In January, Beck’s eponymous talk show posted the steepest ratings declines for any cable news program. Glenn Beck averaged 1.8 million viewers, down 39% vs. January 2010.”

For younger viewers, the decline was even deeper. “In 25-54 [category], the drop was even bigger, 48%, to 397,000.”

Notwithstanding Beck’s  August event on the Washington mall, the TV performer and ideologue’s popularity seems to have peeked two years ago in 2009 with 2.8 million viewers.

In recent months however, Beck, who called President Obama a racist,  has took a huge hit: first from civil rights groups, like colorofchange.org who organized a highly successful campaign to get advertisers to boycott his show – some 200 withdrew ads – and secondly from listeners who may have grown weary of his extremes – a factor that may paradoxically cause him to become even more acerbic.

The reason for this the drive for advertising dollars coupled with a decline in popularity of cable news shows. In this regard already two years ago commentator David Frum wrote “conservative talkers are responding to a collapse in advertising revenues. According to Scott Fybush, the proprietor of North East Radio Watch, talk radio has lost 30-40% of its ad revenues.”

Frum continued, “In this environment, radio hosts believe that anger is their only path to survival.”

Other cable shows have also shown a decline says, deadline.com .  “Also hard hit in January was Fox News’ On the Record with Greta (1.5 million, down 36%; 333,000 in 25-54, down 49%). Other cable news channels with big ratings declines include CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 (595,000, down 34%; 174,000 in 25-54, down 43%) and CNN’s Parker Spitzer (478,000, down 39% from last year when Campbell Brown was hosting the 8 PM hour; 125,000 in 25-54, down 46%).”

Last week, Jewish leaders took out an ad in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal sharply criticizing Beck and other Fox News commentators’ blasts at George Soros and comparisons of President Obama to Nazis.

Photo: Creative Commons