Funny. But I don’t think many people will PAY not to be able to watch Fox, even if they don’t want to. So did you order one?

I don’t even get cable and I want to order one.

What ingolfson said, but with some embellishment. Here is the business question. Are there enough people who really want to protest FNS and who find paying someone else about $10 to do it for them a good trade for their own time? I suspect that FoxBlocker is on the wrong side of the odds on this throw of the dice.

Tempting to get one and surreptitiously install it in the cable feed to some TV in a public place that usually stays set on FOX.  (Then sit back and watch the fun!)

Well, I don’t watch TV (and we don’t get Fox here in Japan anyway) but I just like the idea that they made it in the first place.  Sure I can skip it with my remote, but that doesn’t make the same statement as “I actually paid money to screw you Fox jerks”.  And $10 ain’t so much.  It’s a good gift anyway.
Plus, if you have kids who like to watch cartoons on Fox, this is an easy way to enforce a boycott in your house.  For channel surfers, it decreases the risk you might accidentally click to Fox.
And there’s the added fun that DOF described, though the folks at FOXBlocker would never openly advocate that sort of thing

Shana, I actually went the whole hog. I threw away my TV (three years ago). And we don’t even GET Fox here in Europe, as far as I know.

Now if I could just get the GEZ to stop bugging me (sorta like the IRS, but worse, and they collect mandatory fees for the public TV programs).

That’s ridiculous.  We have a similar monopoly here in Japan, called NHK, and they send people to your house to pick up exhorbitant fees for watching their single channel.  They are always puzzled when the foreigners refuse to pay; the channel is entirely in Japanese and none of us ever watch it.  Yar!

Funny, we have someone who I assume is an american living abroad, who doesnt even watch Fox trying to convince us here at home (USA) to block out Fox. Very amusing
Last I checked but wasn’t Foxnews leading by large margins in the ratings?
Must be all those stupid people living in Red states.
Once again, very amusing. Please stay in Japan.

I believe it is true that FoxNews leads when compared to the other cable news channels, but lags ABC, NBC and CBS.

Stupid red state residents - no. Uniformed and/or incurious, that’s another matter.

VernR, I guess it would be safe to assume that you have some statistics to back this up? :0

Found this article on Fair.org and thought it might shine some light on the ratings war. For convenience, I’m quoting the whole article..

Why Fox has higher ratings--when CNN has more viewers

By Steve Rendall

Reporting on the ratings rivalry between the Fox News Channel (FNC) and CNN is often misleading--and almost always over-hyped.

“Fox Tops CNN as Choice for Cable News,” declared one typical headline (Chicago Tribune, 3/24/03). “Fox News Channel Continues to Crush CNN,” reported Knight Ridder (Dallas Morning News, 2/3/04) in a column comparing the rivalry to a party primary: “Fox News Channel is winning the Nielsen caucuses.” Last summer (8/17/03), the New York Times Magazine declared, looking back at the period of the Iraq invasion, “Fox was--and still is--trouncing CNN in the ratings.”

After exposure to countless similar stories published since January 2002, when Fox was reported to have surpassed CNN in the Nielsen ratings, one might naturally conclude that Fox has more viewers than CNN.

But it’s not true. On any given day, more people typically tune to CNN than to Fox.

So what are the media reports talking about? With few exceptions, stories about the media business report a single number for ratings (often expressed two different ways--as “points” or “share"). This number is often presented as if it were the result of a popularity contest or a democratic vote. But it is actually the average number of viewers watching a station or a show in a typical minute, based on Nielsen Media Research’s monitoring of thousands of households.

The average is arrived at by counting viewers every minute. Heavy viewers--those who tune in to a station and linger there--have a greater impact, as they can be counted multiple times as they watch throughout the day.

When an outlet reports that CNN is trailing Fox, they are almost invariably using this average tally, which Fox has been winning for the past two years. For the year 2003, Nielsen’s average daily ratings show Fox beating CNN 1.02 million viewers to 665,000.

But there is another important number collected by Nielsen (though only made available to the firm’s clients) that tells another story. This is the “cume,” the cumulative total number of viewers who watch a channel for at least six minutes during a given day. Unlike the average ratings number the media usually report, this number gives the same weight to the light viewer, who tunes in for a brief time, as it does to the heavy viewer.

How can CNN have more total viewers when Fox has such a commanding lead in average viewers? Conventional industry wisdom is that CNN viewers tune in briefly to catch up on news and headlines, while Fox viewers watch longer for the opinion and personality-driven programming. Because the smaller total number of Fox viewers are watching more hours, they show up in the ratings as a higher average number of viewers.

CNN regularly claims a cume about 20 percent higher than Fox’s (Deseret Morning News, 1/12/04). For instance, in April 2003, during the height of the fighting in Iraq, CNN’s cume was significantly higher than Fox’s: 105 million viewers tuned into CNN compared to 86 million for Fox (Cablefax, 4/30/03). But in the same period, the ratings reported by most media outlets had Fox in the lead, with an average of 3.5 million viewers to CNN’s 2.2 million.

Even among Fox’s core audience of conservatives, CNN has an edge in total viewership. A study by the ad agency Carat USA (Hollywood Reporter, 8/13/03) found that 37 percent of viewers calling themselves “very conservative” watch CNN in the course of a week, while only 32 percent tune to Fox.

In the interest of fair disclose, and so no one discounts this information as biased, I am a conservative atheist, I tend to watch Fox over CNN (although I cringe whenever the topic turn to religion) and I tend to vote republican even though I’m a member of the Libertarian Party.

Typical Faux News watcher…

Oops, not you KPat

I can’t tell if that’s a good or bad amusing, Ken.  At any rate, I am indeed an American living abroad, but I haven’t always lived here.  Fox News’ coverage of the Sept 11 attacks was the last straw for me watching television, esp. televised news.

Oops, not you KPat

LOL! Don’t worry, Spocko, I recognize that I’m not a typical Fox viewer. I’m atheist, Pro Choice and pro gay marriage just off the top and I think less than one per cent of their audience can say that.

I do think that all news stations and networks are extremely biased in one direction or the other and I like that Fox is so out front about their bias as compared to others. It makes it easy to tell when they’re full of shit.

VernR, I guess it would be safe to assume that you have some statistics to back this up? :0

It would indeed be a safe assumption.

Well, I was amused that someone like yourself would actually think that a product like this could possibly do anything to damage Foxnews. Also that there a people who would waste there money.
Tell ya what, pull out the manual for your TV or cable box, there is a way to block any channels you don’t wish to view. I just saved you $8.95.
That is unless you feel the need to tell Foxnews “nyah nyah nyah boo booâ€?, but I think they (Fox) will be laughing harder. 
Just for the sake of disclosure, I probably watch more local news than anything else. It’s the only place you can get just the news and not have to hear what some multimillionaire anchorperson thinks.

That’s not always true, Ken. I’ll just have to assume you have better local newscasts than we do.

As much as I’m no fan of FOX News, I do think this product is pretty silly. Ironically the local FOX affiliate has a decent morning newscast so I do watch that at least. Probably helps that it used to be the local CBS affiliate.

Poor choice of words on my part. I shouldn’t have said “only”. I’m sure that I had experienced times like the one you posted and immediately changed the local news channel.
What I should have said was that I just find the local news easier to stomach than watching the likes of CNN, Foxnews, Dan Rather and the rest.

I’m certainly in agreement with you on that aspect at least.

LOL! Don’t worry, Spocko, I recognize that I’m not a typical Fox viewer. I’m atheist, Pro Choice and pro gay marriage just off the top and I think less than one per cent of their audience can say that.

Why do you vote GOP then? Just to be different?

I mean…

Ah well, none of my business. But curious nontheless.

Why do you vote GOP then? Just to be different?

I mean…

Ah well, none of my business. But curious nontheless.

Mostly it’s a matter of money. The republicans usually spend less money. (Notice I said usually. I have a big problem with the was the current administration spends money.) I prefer smaller federal government in every possible respect and would rather see the vast majority of social spending done by local and state governments. I also tend to be hawkish on matters of foreign policy.

ingolfson, you can get Fox News in Britain at least. It’s on Sky around channel 500 I think. I don’t watch it, I don’t need a box to help me, but it’s there if you want to.