One reason why blogs have taken off
I believe this is one of the main reasons why blogging took off. People were tired of monitoring all the news all day and all week. I know I got over having CNN turned on as background noise every day (once I got over the Weather Channel serving the same purpose). Many people would rather have a trusted blogger pointing them to the more interesting things happening in their field of interest. According to this New York Times story (registration required):
According to Nielsen Media Research, about 24.1 million people watched the three evening newscasts each night, on average, in June and July, compared with 25.2 million during the two-month period last year and 24.3 million during June and July 2001.
As for cable, CNN's daily audience during June and July was, on average, 413,000 people, down from 502,000 last summer, according to Nielsen Media Research, and much smaller than its audience of 2.5 million during the thick of the war. The daily average audience for MSNBC, which is owned by the Microsoft Corporation and G.E., fell from 254,000 last summer to 197,000 this one — which is down from 1.3 million during the war.
And while the average daily audience at Fox News grew to 753,000, compared with 612,000 during last summer's two-month period, the audience was nowhere the average of 3.2 million people who watched Fox News each evening during the thick of the Iraq fighting.