Replication data for: Has Cable Ended the Golden Age of Presidential Television?

For most of this era, presidents have been able to commandeer the national airwaves and speak to captive television audiences. Recent evidence suggests, however, that the president is losing his audience.

In this article we investigate two leading alternative explanations for the erosion of the president's television audience: the rise of political cynicism and the growth of cable. We first develop a model of the individual's decision calculus in determining whether or not to watch the president. We derive a series of hypotheses concerning the situational and behavioral factors which determine whether viewers will elect to watch the president.