Following the announcement of the end of Glenn Beck’s Fox News program, there has been discussion of the impact of Beck’s declining ratings on the decision. Indeed, ratings for The Glenn Beck Program fell to an average of 1.9mm in January 2011 from their 2.8mm peak in January 2009.
Although ratings for The Glenn Beck Program have slid, online interest in Beck has grown – though peaks in searches for variants of “Glenn Beck” have often been related to the talking head’s most contentious comments.

April 2009 – The 9/12 Project
September 2009 – Reactions to the pundit’s comments claiming President Obama is “racist” and subsequent loss of sponsors.
April 2010 – Christians urged to boycott Beck, as Beck encouraged people to leave their churches if they heard sermons related to social and economic justice, as he believed those were “code words” for Nazism and Communism. Also high interest in Beck’s interview with ex-congressman Eric Massa.
August 2010 – Beck’s “Rally to Restore Honor”
November 2010 – 400 rabbis called for sanctioning Beck due to his “frequent and inappropriate” references to the Holocaust.
April 2011 – Media coverage from ratings decline and possible end of show.
Beck’s answer to The Huffington Post, The Blaze ranked 51st in our News & Media category in March, as compared to The Huffington Post at #8; and the market share for The Blaze was 84% lower than The Huffington Post.
Thanks to Margot Bonner, an Analyst with the Custom Data & Analytics group for the analysis behind today’s blog post.