You know how Glenn Beck's TV show is a ratings juggernaut fueled by the tea party movement?
Well, maybe it's time to rethink that assumption -- because now that tea party 2010 is here, Beck's ratings are down from tea party 2009.
From April 1 to April 14, 2009 (the two weeks immediately preceding tea party 2009) the Glenn Beck show averaged 2.23 million viewers.
Meanwhile, from April 1 to April 14, 2010 his show averaged 2.15 million viewers.
That's right -- in 2010, Beck's ratings have actually dropped slightly from 2009 levels in the runup to Fox's second annual tea party day, falling about 4%.
That's not a dramatic decline, and Beck clearly still has a loyal audience. But his audience is not growing.
Beck's April-April ratings performance undercuts the notion that he's building a sustainable ratings juggernaut. Instead, it lends weight to the argument that he's a loon with a loyal audience of loons. Sometimes he gets so crazy that people tune in just to see him go nuts. But it gets tiresome, and the only audience he can count on are the hardcore teabaggers. He's a morning zoo radio host looking for a new way to shock his audience. He'll probably get some more spikes, but he's not building his base audience.
On any given day, most Americans just don't give a shit what Glenn Beck has to say. The proof? 99% of them aren't even watching his show.
(These numbers are drawn from a spreadsheet I compiled based on Nielsen Data published by Mediabistro.com's TV Newser. More Beck ratings trend lines here.)