Colbert Report Viewers Are Slightly More Politically Knowledgeable Than Daily Show's

There are so many headlines I could have given this post, but from past experience if you put “The Daily Show” into a your blog you will get hits. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released its biannually media consumption survey. There’s a lot of interesting nuggets of data in it. (I promise I will get to the part about The Daily Show in a minute).

First off, ask yourself, without using google, can you:

1. Can you tell me the name of the current U.S. Secretary of State?


2. Say who is the current prime minister of Great Britain?
   a. Gordon Brown
   b. Rupert Murdoch
   c. Robert Gates
   d. John Howard


3. Happen to know which political party has a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives?

If you can answer all three correctly, then you are identified by Pew as having a high knowledge score of political information. Frankly on number two I’m surprised they didn’t throw in Tony Blair as a choice.

So want to know how well the public answered those questions? Only 18% could correctly answer all three. That was the national average. Pew then breaks it down by viewers of certain shows.

You can see the full chart here but (to justify using the title on this post):

The Colbert Report and The Daily Show are notable for having relatively well-informed audiences that are younger than the national average: 34% of regular Colbert viewers answered the three political knowledge questions correctly, as did 30% of regular Daily Show viewers. Less than a quarter of either audience is older than 50 (22% Colbert, 23% Daily Show), compared with 41% of the general public.

I’ve often thought The Colbert Report is a tad more cerebral than The Daily Show. (Oh and the other late-night comics Leno/Letterman, only 20% of their audience could answer all three correctly.)

But in any case there’s a lot of other interesting data. I’m very surprised about the breakdown of audiences by gender. (Plus I’m always curious if Nielsen gets the same ratios of male verses female viewership).

There is exactly even split between men and women in reading daily newspapers, watching CNN, news magazines (like Time and Newsweek) and even the Sunday News Talk shows. Surprisingly slightly more women than men watch Fox News. (Also MSNBC, and CNBC???)

But there are a number of shows and types of shows that are majority male. Rush Limbaugh, the ratio wasn’t even close, 72% of his audience is male. Ladies favor Colbert over Stewart by four percentage points. The Daily Show audience is 66% male and The Colbert Report is 62%.

I don’t have an answer why The Daily Show skews so heavily male but perhaps their lack of female correspondents could be an answer. Also Jon can sometimes get a little frat-boyish when talking about women politicians like Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. I have also heard, through a grapevine that his writing room is way more machismo than Colbert’s. It’s not quite Saturday Night Live, but that’s kind of flavor (meaning if you’re not a white dude who fits in, you don’t fit in.) Stephen Colbert seems to run a slightly different type of room and has more women writers.

Wam 2008 Wrap Up

Well I’m back from my weekend adventures in Boston (which went swimmingly until I left my bag on the shuttle to long-term parking in Baltimore resulting in an hour and 45-minute roundtrip drive to retrieve it. Ah well.) I've learned that if I want to blog and travel I'm probably going to have to buy a laptop sometime this year...

First off let me say the Center for New Words, and Jaclyn Friedman rocks. This was my first time attending the Women, Action & the Media Conference (official name of WAM! 2008) and apparently it’s doubled in sized since 2007. Roughly 600 attendees came this year and yet somehow Jaclyn made putting on a conference look easy. I have no idea how she did it, but I was impressed how smoothly everything ran. Plus they fed us at every turn and you can’t help but appreciate it.

Going to a conference like this can be totally energizing, and also really helpful to see the good that my organization, American Forum and the National Women’s Editorial Forum, does. (Here you can see women talking to my coworker Sui Lang after our panel discussion "You in the Commentary Continuum: Crafting an Op-Ed." Great smile Sui Lang!)

I ran into so many women who have written for us and I talked to a lot of great women who are also eager to write op-eds. I encouraged a lot of people to consider applying for our May media training session in Washington, DC. (Anyone interested in learning how to get their messages out in the media, print/TV/radio, should think about applying. We’re looking for candidates from across the country and there are scholarships available to offset travel costs.)

I also grabbed some neat “conference swag” from Planned Parenthood. This is an array of flavored lubes including mint, watermelon, strawberry-kiwi, bubble gum (?!) and pina colada. Ahh, I love freebies like these.

As for the panels, one of the best ones I attended was “Breaking the Frame: Revitalizing and Redefining Reproductive Rights Media Coverage” with Emily Douglas from RH Reality Check, Aimee Thorn-Thomsen, executive director of Pro-Choice Public Education Project, Cristina Page, author (and columnist who’s written for American Forum) and Amada Marcotte, host of RealityCast and blogger on Pandagon.

One thing I noticed as a bit of theme for the weekend was how frequently progressive media is not entirely supportive of women. It’s a trend I’ve noticed from backdoor stories about how some liberal organizations still seem to think that women’s issues are secondary, or “fluffy” or that having one woman author amongst a sea of white men is somehow progressive. Its sad to think we have to continue these discussions with what should be already supportive partners. It's hard to continue these conversations with both mainstream publications and alternative voices.

In any case, I prefence that to bring up the fact that during the panel Cristina Page mentioned that Jon Stewart’s booker told her “Jon’s never going to do an episode on abortion, it’s just not funny.” Which Page rightly pointed out that what is naturally “funny” about Iraq? Moreover, if the issue is just to “avoid” talking about controversial topics, Stewart had no problem bringing on Ramesh Ponnuru to talk about his book “Party of Death” which is about the Democratic Party’s commitment to keeping abortion legal. So it’s apparently not controversial to bring on anti-abortion authors, but pro-choice...phweett! “Not funny.”

Amanda Marcotte brought up what I thought was an interesting point that talking about abortion also means talking about sex. I think Americans, if we’re not prudish exactly, are happily judgmental about other people’s sex lives. I mentioned to the panel an op-ed column in the Washington Post a couple years ago by a well-to-do 42-year-old woman who found out it was hard to get emergency contraception and then ended up getting an abortion because she became pregnant. A lot of the commentary and the live chat that followed her column chastised for not living her life perfectly (and for having the abortion) proof that the public can always figure out how someone else could have run their lives.

It’s sad because I sometimes thing we need to talk more about personal abortion stories. Ms Magazine had the “We Had Abortions” issue but it was just a list of names, not stories. As Cristina Page pointed out on the panel “We have statistics, and [anti-choicers] have heart-breaking stories.” It’s not that I think we should engage in tit-for-tat narratives -- because part of being pro-CHOICE means that I don’t have to endorse your choice -- I just have to allow you the agency to make that choice yourself about whether to become a parent. (Frankly sometimes I think a lot of people shouldn’t have become parents...)

But, because it's extremely difficult to talk about later-term abortions (where the anti-choicers have shifted all the rhetoric) and the reasons why they may be performed, I think our side does need to present some personal stories to help explain why abortion is a personal story for every woman.

Why is SNL Dissing The Daily Show?

Twice in one week now I've read a quote from someone at SNL taking a potshot at The Daily Show.

First in Entertainment Weekly Seth Meyers is quoted:

''We're the only people that dramatize the news,'' says head writer Meyers. ''We can go to a place where The Daily Show can't.''

And then my friend just pointed me to a interview with Tina Fey in Reader's Digest.

RD: What pleases you more, applause or laughter?
Fey: Laughter. You can prompt applause with a sign. My friend, SNL writer Seth Meyers, coined the term clapter, which is when you do a political joke and people go, "Woo-hoo." It means they sort of approve but didn't really like it that much. You hear a lot of that on [whispers] The Daily Show.

Is SNL suddenly insecure about its place in the political commentary spectrum? I don't understand why when for the first time in years people are actually talking about its political skits.

I'm sorry SNL, The Daily Show does it four times a week, 46 weeks a year. In the same EW article Lorne Michaels is quoted saying he's going to tough it out by putting on four shows IN A ROW. The first time its been done since 1976. Whoo-hoo.

Sometimes one show gets more credit simply by creating more product for fans to digest.

But really, Meyers/Fey...you don't have to be jealous of Stewart/Colbert. It's not like SNL is 30 Rock and The Daily Show is Studio 60 on The Sunset Strip. You can both be good shows with good political commentary. I just think The Daily Show is better.