THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA IS KILLING CHILDREN'S TELEVISION!* *(No, it isn't.)

Here's a story from Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire that your right-wing relatives are probably sharing on Facebook right now:

Nickelodeon Ratings Crash Amid LGBTQ Push

There’s growing evidence that Nickelodeon’s hard push to promote the LGBTQ agenda to children is having a negative impact on the network’s ratings.

In the last two weeks, both Nickelodeon and its preschool-targeted network, Nick Jr., have released videos championing “trans,” “queer,” and “pansexual” inclusion....

These latest videos come after the network began overtly celebrating “Pride” month several years ago and implied in 2020 that its most popular character, SpongeBob SquarePants, is gay....

Pirates and Princesses, a popular entertainment site specializing in Disney-related news, ... says [Nickelodeon] has seen a major decline in viewers since it began overtly pushing the LGBTQ agenda to its young viewers:

Since July of 2017, Nickelodeon’s viewership has dropped from 1.3 million average viewers per week to a June of 2021 average of only 372,000. In only four years, Nickelodeon has dropped more than two thirds of its audience. That is catastrophically bad for the cable channel....

There are signs that Viacom has not learned any lessons and is retrofitting these old shows with the same principles that have resulted in Nickelodeon’s huge loss in ratings. Even with a show about infants, much of the headlines have been about a retconned, now-lesbian character; whatever your thoughts on that issue, it’s hard to see how a children’s show about infants is best served in advertising when the news is all about sexuality.

But as a December 2020 story from Variety VIP noted, most cable and broadcast channels have seen large declines in viewership in recent years -- not primarily because of wokeness or LGBTQ-friendliness, but because more people are watching streaming channels.. For instance, TNT lost 51.8% of its viewers between 2014 and 2020. Adult Swim lost 61.5%.

The Disney Channel, which is a rival to Nickelodeon and isn't singled out in the Daily Wire story, lost 81.8% of its viewers between 2014 and 2020. (Disney's Disney+ streaming service launched in November 2019.)

And maybe the problem at Nickelodeon has to do with corporate parent ViacomCBS -- its channels seem to be doing badly across the board:

The CW, which ViacomCBS co-owns with WarnerMedia, has seen audiences decline by more than half (-51%; -844k). Other ViacomCBS networks seeing more than half of their viewers evaporate since 2014 are MTV2 (-131k; -70.4%), Nick at Nite (-902k; -67.1%), Nicktoons (-173k; -66.5%), VH1 (-370k; -52.3%), and Comedy Central (-362k; -51.5%).

... BET has lost 317,000 primetime viewers over the last six years, representing a decline of -45.5%. MTV is down by 367k, a loss of -45.5%, and Paramount Network - the rebranded Spike - is down by 329,000 (or -41.6%).

This reminds me of another recent Daily Wire assertion: that California lockdowns were the reason for 100% of the state's restaurant closures last year. (In fact, there were high numbers of restaurant closures last year even in states that never locked down, for the obvious reason that many people avoided restaurants altogether; also, restaurant closures are common even in good years.)

The Daily Wire has ragebait down to a formula. Don't confuse these stories with the truth.