Has Cable Ended the Golden Age of Presidential Television?
 

Abstract.  For the past 30 years, presidents have used prime-time television addresses and press conferences to promote their policies and themselves to the American people.  For most of this era, presidents have been able to commandeer the national airwaves and speak to “captive” television audiences.  Recent evidence suggests, however, that the president is losing his audience.  In this article we investigate two leading alternative explanations for the erosion of the president’s television audience: the rise of political cynicism and the growth of cable.  We first develop a model of the individual’s decision calculus in determining whether or not to watch the president.  We derive a series of hypotheses concerning the situational and behavioral factors which determine whether viewers will elect to watch the president.  We then test the model’s predictions with both time-series and cross-sectional data -- the former through analysis of 128 Nielsen ratings for prime-time presidential addresses and press conferences during the years 1969 to 1998, and the latter through an investigation of the 1996 NES survey.  We conclude that cable television -- not political cynicism -- has, indeed, ended the golden era of presidential television.  Moreover, we find evidence in the scheduling of addresses that both presidents and the broadcast networks have begun adapting strategically to this new reality.
 

Matthew A. Baum
(mbaum@weber.ucsd.edu)

Samuel Kernell
(skernell@ucsd.edu)