Al Jazeera

With a big splash, but with less audience, Al Jazeera premiered recently as the kinda sorta next big thing in U.S. cable news. The network vowed to focus on hard news, as opposed to the crap often seen on other cable networks (I'm talking about you, CNN, Fox, and MSNBC).

But what do people think about the network? Not much, if you believe this survey of over 8,000 respondents, and I especially like how they broke it down by state, including red states versus blue states, which you can pull off when your N is so big. Scroll down the page to find the maps.

Warning -- best I can tell, this is not a random sample. I can't tell at all how they got their respondents and that is, indeed, worrisome. That said, the numbers make sense.

Oh, you can see the raw data yourself on a Google docs page. Download it, if ya like, and crank away, though there's nothing there they don't show you on their graphs and maps.

When it Comes to Politics, Cable News Rules

A new poll is out that defines how America gets its political news (cable) and who they like best (Fox News) and which TV personalities have the most influence (Bill O'Reilly, then Glenn Beck, then Rush Limbaugh).  But not all is good news for the Rushmeister:

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh was the third-most-positively ranked, with 36 percent saying he has a positive impact on the discourse, but his negatives far outweighed his positives, with 52 percent saying he has a negative impact. 

"To some extent, Limbaugh has become almost a caricature in a way, so I don’t know how much influence he has beyond entertainment value,” Arteron said. “Whereas, in some way, the other people on Fox are seen as more legitimate news operations.”

Okay, so cable TV rules, but 72 percent of folks say they read newspapers or their web sites for political news, which is higher than broadcast television news.