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Wednesday, August 9, 2006
Gallup’s wacky news/talk survey
If I were Barbara Walters, I might be a tad worried about the upcoming debut of Rosie O’Donnell on “The View.” And if I were CBS News, I might have concerns, too.
O’Donnell, who joins Walters’ daytime talker in September, apparently has lost a good deal of her All-American Girl appeal from the days of her own syndicated show a few years back.
According to the latest Gallup poll of TV news and talk-show hosts, O’Donnell is viewed as “unfavorable” by 60 percent of those surveyed. By comparison, the much-maligned Star Jones, who was recently booted from “The View,” has a mere 45 percent unfavorable score.
So, who is America’s most-favored news or talk show personality? By far, Diane Sawyer is TV’s most beloved, with an 80 percent favorable rating and a slender 11 percent unfavorable. The ABC News star and “Good Morning America” host even beat the totally adorable Katie Couric, who perked up “Today” for a decade and is now headed for the CBS News anchor desk. Couric had a 60 percent favorable and 23 unfavorable rating. Maybe Couric’s legion of fans are still ticked off that she left “Today.”
Heck, even Dan Rather, who was widely believed to be loathed after he was bumped from “The CBS Evening News,” had a 70 percent favorable and 26 percent unfavorable rating in the poll. Rather better-liked than Couric? Hmmm.
And what of Brian Williams, anchor of the No. 1-rated “NBC Nightly News?” The successor to Tom Brokaw had the strangest results: 47 percent favorable, 7 percent unfavorable and a stunning 38 percent who had never heard of him.
ABC anchor Charles Gibson had a 55 percent favorable, 8 percent unfavorable and 27 percent never-heard-of, while cable guys Bill O’Reilly (Fox) had a 45 good/35 bad response and Anderson Cooper (CNN) had a 43/9 split.
TiVo myth about reality recordings busted
Apparently there’s no truth to the rumor that viewers are less likely to TiVo or otherwise record reality shows. On the just-released TiVo ratings for late July, episodes of Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance,” CBS’s “Big Brother: All-Stars” and NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” gobbled up the top six spots.
In fact, nearly half of the total Top 25 recorded programs were reality shows, including “Hell’s Kitchen” (Fox), “America’s got Talent” (NBC), “Rock Star: Supernova” (CBS) and “Treasure Hunters” (NBC).
Way down toward the bottom of the list were nonreality shows such as “Windfall,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “House,” “The Office,” “Two and a Half Men” and “CSI.”
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