well, advertisers should know best what a good tv show is. I religiously watch the Ed Show every day at 17:00 et on msnbc. For one thing, I am very disciplined and 17:00 is when I get to start smoking my medicine. And for the other thing, it is a real trip. Especially all the viewer comments that scroll across the bottom of the screen. You quickly realize if you are talking to a liberal you are not really talking to a rational human being.
I quit watching O'reilly when he claimed high oil prices were the result of traders hunched over their computer bidding up the price all day, and the government should do something to stop them. otherwise, if I am awake my tv is on in the background. I watch everything, sports, business, history, cooking, science, but very little of what I watch is watched by many others.
I watch almost no TV whatsoever. That includes FN. My workouts (martial arts), job and little boy take up all my time.
I raised 3 kids with no tv. 30 years I went with no tv. My kids all read books, just for the hell of it. Top in their class because there was nothing to do but homework. Now when I have to sign up for something and they ask a security question, mine is "who was your best friend?" answer? "tv". Couldn't live without it. Ratings? If I find a good show and people start watching it, the show gets dumbed down to keep ratings up, and I move on.
In retrospect, the collapse of oil prices in 2008 and again recently has/had a great deal to do with speculation. OTOH, the "herding" into commodities is another side effect of "emergency Fed measures" which include 7+ years of ZIRP.
I stopped watching him when I realized he thinks he knows everything about everything and has every solution to every problem. That is a left wing politician's trait, even though O'reilly claims to be independent.
if it's so easy to bid up the price, please show me how to do it. My first teacher was the Hunt brothers.