CNBC Viewers Less Informed than Average

by: Daniel De Groot

Sat Mar 07, 2009 at 12:30

Respondents were asked (in Fall 2008) 1) Which party was in control of the US House of Representatives, 2) Who the Secretary of State was, and 3) Who the British Prime Minister was.  How did CNBC's regular viewers stack up?  Here's a selection of the results, ordered by % knowing all three answers:

Outlet	US House Control	Name Sec State	Name UK PM	All Three
New Yorker/The Atlantic	71	71	59	48
NPR	73	72	57	44
Rush Limbaugh	83	71	41	36
Business Magazines	71	64	46	36
Local TV News	55	44	28	16
CNBC	51	45	28	17
TV News Magazines	56	44	28	16
All Resp	53	42	28	18

So there's CNBC, managing (just) to beat out readers of TV Guide for political awareness, but losing out to local news, and below the average.  

I realize they're a business network, so I included the readers of Business Magazines who do respectably well for people whose primary focus presumably isn't politics or foreign policy.  Also, it's not like foreign events don't ever impact the markets, and considering London's role in the financial world was it really so unfair to ask the obsessive day-trader set at CNBC who the Prime Minister of the UK is?

I hadn't realized how bad CNBC was because I never watch it and kind of assumed it was the sober business channel that made Fox's business channel look silly.  Instead it was the reverse, where Fox managed to make CNBC look good just by being so much worse.

Anyway, it seems it deserves every punch it is getting.  I guess it figures that the greed-driven and ideologically blinkered business world that created this mess would have a network that suited their tastes.  That's how markets work, after all.