It's a good piece of data Hank, I did miss your post... I hadn't looked at the mid-term elections, only the last general.

The 2008 general election had CNN about 1/3 larger than FOX... And to my real point, mainstream (CNN/NBC/ABC/CBS) had about 45M viewers, while Fox + MSNBC were about 16M viewers.

It's interesting to see the different results because we know the 2010 mid-term election was successful for the right, so it makes sense that the "winners" watched lots of TV that night. The reverse probably was true in 2008, so it's not really clear what's a trend and what reflects the level of success/enthusiasm for each group during the electoral cycle.

Regardless, I reached my conclusion when I realized that 51M out of 60M viewers on 2008 election night voted *against* Fox news as their news outlet of preference, so presumably a lot of them would -- in an a-la-carte world -- probably choose against Fox in that context too.

After more thinking though, it's unclear how this would all break, because in an a-la-carte world, you could easily imagine paying the same $$$'s for overall less choices.

I think what I'll argue for instead is not a-la-carte, but rather "OptOut" where I can get my $0.71 a month back and lose Fox. I don't want to individually opt IN, but I do think my decision to watch ESPN in my house shouldn't REQUIRE me to support what I consider to be a political/religious advocacy network.