Call it the "Trump Phenomenon." Americans watched 44% more cable TV news last year than they did the year before.
The trend is continuing this year -- strangely, at a time when overall television watching is down.
University of Houston Communications professor Garth Jowett says American television is ... boring. He compares it to the Netflix offering of "The Fall" television series.
“People actually watched that show and had no idea where it was going to go,” Jowett says, “as opposed to seeing the same thing on American television, you know, week-after-week, the heroes are going to survive, they're going to solve the problem.”
Driving the increases for cable TV news are older viewers, ages 50-to-64. Millennial defections to cell phones and tablets for entertainment are a reason why overall television watching is down.