How bad are cnn ratings

CNN ratings are dramatically down since Trump left office. The network lost nearly 50% of its target audience during primetime hours.

Twitter LinkedIn icon The word «in».

LinkedIn Fliboard icon A stylized letter F.

Flipboard Facebook Icon The letter F.

Email Link icon An image of a chain link. It symobilizes a website link url.

CNN has seen ratings plummet since former President Donald Trump left the White House, according to a Fox News report on Nielsen Media Research data.

The network averaged 2.5 million primetime viewers between the day after the election— November 4, 2020 — and Inauguration Day on January 20, 2021, Fox News reported.

Since President Joe Biden was sworn in, however, those numbers have dropped dramatically. An average of 1.6 million viewers tuned in during primetime hours between January 21 and March 15, Fox News said. That’s a downturn of 36% since Biden took office.

Primetime viewers also ditched CNN in the period between December 28 through to January 20. The network hemorrhaged almost half (49%) of its primetime viewers, Fox News reported. An average of 3.1 million primetime fell to just 1.6 million, the media outlet said.

The primetime numbers are abysmal among CNN’s key audience. The network’s target age group is those aged 25 to 54, according to MIT Media Lab. CNN has seen a 47% drop in viewership in that demographic during Biden’s inauguration and March 15, Fox News said.

During daytime hours, CNN’s ratings aren’t faring much better. The network saw the number of daytime viewers drop by 34% in the period between the election and Inauguration Day, according to Fox News. Among the key age demographic, CNN lost 58% of those aged 25 to 54.

CNN thrived during the Trump presidency. The network hit a 40-year viewership record in November 2020, The New York Times reported.

But there’s «palpable concern» that the former president’s departure will cause a sustained slump in cable-news ratings, Variety’s Brian Steinberg said.

Network executives have reportedly been fretting over a post-Trump era, with several journalists and executives telling The New York Times that they are «uneasy» about the year ahead.

You Won’t Believe How Bad CNN’s Ratings Have Gotten!

CNN spends each day bashing the living daylights out of President Trump.

Turns out, hardly anyone is watching. Even pro wrestling gets better ratings than Wolf Blitzer.

For the week of Aug. 13 to 19, CNN ranked No. 8 in primetime and No. 6 for total day viewership, according to Nielsen Media Research.

That’s right, CNN has lost a quarter of its viewership compared to the same time last year.

In primetime, CNN was crushed (again) by Fox News, and handily beaten by MSNBC, Home and Garden Television, ESPN, History, Discovery Channel and USA Network (which often airs World Wrestling matches during primetime).

In total day viewership, CNN fell again to Fox, MSNBC, Home and Garden Television, and Investigation Discovery, and Nickelodeon (even “Paw Patrol” beat out Wolfy).

Basic Cable Top 10 – Prime time (Total Viewers)

Fox News (2,999,000)
MSNBC (1,828,000)
HGTV (1,366,000)
USA (1,305,000)
ESPN (1,245,000)
History (1,160,000)
Discovery (1,065,000)
CNN (1,011,000)
Investigation Discovery (987,000)
A&E (974,000)

Basic Cable Top 10 – Total Day (Total Viewers)

Fox News (1,337,000)
MSNBC (1,031,000)
Nickelodeon (949,000)
HGTV (737,000)
Investigation Discovery (706,000)
CNN (686,000)
USA (600,000)
History (575,000)
Hallmark Channel (533,000)
ESPN (532,000)

When you’re losing to wrestling, “Law and Order” reruns — and even SpongeBob SquarePants — you’re doing something very wrong.

The CNN Ratings Disaster Would Be Worse Without Its Manufactured Audience

Share

Brian Stelter was mad. That alone is not newsworthy, as many on-air personalities over at the Apple Network have been perturbed for two and a half years now. But what he was in a snit over was both odd and completely lacking in self-awareness, a condition CNN has suffered for some time now.

Unsurprisingly, it was tweeting from the White House that sparked the reaction. Stelter was set off by President Trump making a number of comments and tweets in support of the news channel One America News Network (OANN). The notably right-leaning outlet has been a favorable source of news for the president, and in return (as a reward?) he has lately been touting the channel in his feed.

Stelter was having none of it. CNN’s self-appointed media watchdog launched a series of tweets demeaning the network’s presence and ridiculing the idea they have “good” ratings.

With Trump promoting @OANN again this week, I went looking for ratings data. How many people besides the president are watching? OANN doesn’t subscribe to Nielsen, the industry standard. But it turns out that Nielsen IS measuring the channel…

This is subterfuge, as Trump was not comparing the OANN audience share to the larger networks’. Brian pretends to counter the claim that OANN has big ratings—except Trump’s words on the matter were that the network was experiencing a “big ratings jump.” His comment was stating they are on the rise.

In attempting to counter the president, this was hardly Stelter’s largest mistake. That would be his mention of ratings at all, considering his home channel has been in a free fall with viewership for a good portion of this year. Once the industry standard, CNN has fallen well behind the other major cable news channels—Fox News and MSNBC—for years. And 2019 has gone from bad to brutal for the network.

Statistician, Heal Thyself

It is revealing that Stelter’s Twitter thread hesitates to get into the hard numbers. CNN has been enduring consistent erosion, trailing in primetime behind not just other news nets but also channels like The Food Network and The Hallmark Channel. Fox News frequently outdraws CNN in multiples, at a three or four to one ratio some nights. CNN’s audience flight became even starker following the arrival of the special counsel report, with double-digit percentage drops in the ratings in the days following its release.

To see just how bad—and how isolated—the CNN performance has been, one need only look back to 2018. In year-over-year rating comparisons of primetime performance, you can see the massive hit CNN has taken, while its competitors fare much better. All three networks are down, but one plunged.

That last metric is of particular alarm, as the viewing group measured is the prime demo used to set advertising rates. While critics often try to dismiss Fox News dominating the ratings for years as the result of an aging audience, the hard numbers defy the claim. In that core demo, Fox has around a 50 percent higher figure than MSNBC, and it nearly doubles that at CNN.

What makes this measurable failure even more pronounced is considering the remarkable edge CNN enjoys in the TV marketplace. Beyond the fact that CNN once was the only news channel, it benefits from a reality of cable television. CNN is essentially a mandatory selection in even the most basic of cable packages, resulting in a market penetration approaching 95 percent. By the network’s own measure that amounts to roughly 90 million accounts, as it garners well below 1 percent of those customers.

Cornering a Marketplace?

However, cable subscribers are hardly the only arena where CNN has tried to corner a marketplace. In recent years, a growing number of travelers have wondered why they are perpetually subjected to CNN in the concourses and terminals at our nation’s airports.

CNN has deals with nearly 60 airports to be the exclusive broadcast, paying an annual premium and even supplying the televisions for the right. The network controls these TV sets, meaning workers cannot change the channels nor even lower the volume.

Travelers’ distemper at this is understandable. To say that CNN has been trafficking in anti-Trump fervor is more than partisan supposition; it is a measurable fact. The Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center on Media has studied the press coverage, and it is far more than a biased slant taking place, it is an obsession.

Following his inauguration, President Trump was receiving more than three times the amount of news coverage than prior administrations. Compared to negative coverage of past presidents, it is blatant. From Bill Clinton to Barack Obama there have been slight imbalances in ratio, in and around a rate of three to two. Donald Trump has been granted 80 percent negative news stories—and with more than three times the volume of reports.

Even with these assured audience access methods, whether compulsory cable inclusion or catering the broadcast output at travel destinations, CNN finds itself slipping further out of the realm of influence. The channel has a number of rigged standards in its favor, yet it is rapidly falling out of favor with viewers. The effort to compare themselves to of an up-and-coming outlet to lend forced perspective on its ratings cannot hide these realities.

Just How Badly Is CNN Collapsing? Look At These Stunning Numbers.

It’s official: CNN’s ratings are now in PANIC territory.

One of our many labors of love here at The Daily Wire has been the faithful chronicling of the self-inflicted collapse of CNN. In perhaps its worst month in a string of very bad months, over the last few weeks CNN managed to light what’s left of its credibility on fire over Russiagate by retracting yet another story based on a single, anonymous source; force three of its formerly respected journalists to resign to cover its chronic failures; hyperventilate over having cameras at the White House press briefing; humiliate itself with a have-to-read-it-to-believe-it story on Obama’s jeans; and hysterically and hypocritically accuse Trump of supposedly “promoting violence” despite a year of blowing the assassination dog whistle and having employed the likes of Kathy Griffin and Reza Aslan.

Though CNN is prone to lying, the numbers never do. So how is CNN faring in the ratings? The following numbers for Tuesday, June 27 from TV Newser paint a very grim picture of CNN’s rapidly shrinking viewership:

That’s right, CNN was unable to hit 900,000 viewers in any of its primetime timeslots on Tuesday. The closest it got was 886,000 during the 7 p.m. hour, and it spent nearly half the evening under 800,000.

The comparisons between CNN’s viewership and that of Fox News and MSNBC are truly eye-opening. Fox News tripled CNN’s viewership in nearly all of the primetime slots. Fellow left-wing network MSNBC dominated CNN in all primetime hours as well, doubling its viewership by average for most of the evening.

And these numbers are not outliers; CNN has been increasingly coming in last to Fox and MSNBC and often struggles to reach the million-viewer mark during its primetime programming. As Daily Wire‘s John Nolte puts it, the network is in a full-blown ratings “death spiral” prompted by its credibility crisis:

Over the entire second quarter of 2017, looking at total viewers, only one CNN program placed in the top 20 of all cable news shows, and that was Anderson Cooper’s 360, which landed with a thud at number 20. For perspective, a repeat of Tucker Carlson’s Fox New hour attracted more viewers than any show on CNN.

Furthermore, throughout this same quarter, CNN lost to MSNBC in total and primetime demo viewers. This is the first time since 2014 that CNN has lost that demo crown to its leftwing rival. In total viewers last quarter, among all cable news channels, Fox News placed first, MSNBC third, and CNN is all alone in tenth place, just barely ahead of Investigative Discovery, a second-tier offshoot of the Discovery Network.

Below are the numbers via TV Newser for the overall viewership of Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and HLN for Monday through Thursday, followed by the numbers for the key demo:

CNN’s Ratings Truly Are Really Stunningly Bad, and They May Get Worse

Everybody knows that Fox News dominates the ratings. Seven of the top 10 shows for the second quarter—which runs March 29 to June 25— came from the network while the others came from MSNBC. As for CNN? The top-rated show, «Cuomo Prime Time,» comes in at the 22nd spot.

In a takeaway of the news for The Daily Wire, Ben Johnson writes that «CNN thrived in the first quarter because of one event: the January 6 Capitol riot. Lacking a captivating national news story and devoid of compelling guests, the network continues to flounder.»

That show and «Anderson Cooper 360» were the only two from the network to reach 1 million viewers.

The fact then that CNN would shamelessly brag about their ratings is something else, but well, to quote the network’s motto, «this is CNN.» From a June 29 press release:

CNN Tops All Cable News Nets Year-to-Date among Adults 25-54

Erin Burnett Outfront, Anderson Cooper 360 and Don Lemon Tonight

Surpass MSNBC in the Key Demo 25-54 in 2Q; Cuomo Prime Time Posts CNN’s Highest Delivery in Total Viewers and Demo

CNN’s Newest Dayside Programs CNN Newsroom with Ana Cabrera and CNN Newsroom with Alisyn Camerota and Victor Blackwell Rank #1 in Cable News; The Lead with Jake Tapper is also Top-Rated among Adults 25-54 this Quarter

CNN beat MSNBC in all dayparts during the second quarter, including Total Day, prime time, dayside and on weekends in the coveted demographic adults 25-54 according to Nielsen data. CNN is the top-rated cable news network – outperforming MSNBC and FNC — since the New Year in Total Day among 25-54 and is a top 10 cable network in total viewers across dayparts this quarter. During Q2, CNN ranked #3 in total viewers and #2 in the demo in All of Cable (not just news) in dayside. CNN continues to have the youngest audience in cable news in Total Day and prime time in Q2 and continues to reach the largest cumulative TV audience among both total viewers and adults 25-54 2021-to-date. CNN’s digital platforms are also having record numbers, making CNN the most watched and most used news and information brand in the world.

There’s plenty more from the press release, but it’s all to do with the demo.

CNN wasn’t the only one with a press release, though.

Fox News was all too happy to call out the network:

Notably, CNN’s viewership fell to new lows since the start of the year, notching its lowest-rated month in both categories in total day since July 2019, with 70 percent declines in both primetime and total day across the board as well as its lowest-rated primetime demo since August 2015. Of all news networks, CNN is down the most year to year, shedding more than half of its audience with both total day and primetime demo. Meanwhile, MSNBC lost over half its audience in all categories since January 2021 to date, as FNC remains the top-rated cable news network year-to-date in both total day and primetime total viewers.

Host Greg Gutfeld’s new late night program Gutfeld! finished the quarter as the number one-rated show in cable news in total viewers at 11 PM/ET, surpassing every CNN program in total viewers as well as various broadcast and cable comedy shows.

. Notably, the CNN program averaged only 846,000 viewers and 156,000 with A25-54, down 39 percent and 48 percent respectively versus the first quarter. In June, Reliable Sources plummeted to its lowest-rated month of the year, shedding over half its audience in both categories since the start of the calendar year.

A press release from MSNBC compares all of its shows to CNN’s when it comes to the ratings, and makes such notes:

“The Rachel Maddow Show” More Than Doubles CNN’s Total Audience, Tops CNN for the 47th Consecutive Quarter in Total Viewers and A25-54

The following shows topped CNN for the quarter in total viewer: “Way Too Early with Kasie Hunt” at 5am for the 15th straight quarter; “Stephanie Ruhle Reports’’ at 9am for the 18th straight quarter; “Hallie Jackson Reports” at 10am for the 17th straight quarter; “Craig Melvin Reports” at 11am for quarter; “Andrea Mitchell Reports” at 12pm for the quarter; “MTP Daily” at 1pm for the quarter; “Deadline: White House” from 4pm-6pm (“Deadline” was also #1 at 4pm among total viewers), topping CNN for the 16th straight quarter; “The Beat with Ari Melber” at 6pm for the 16th straight quarter; “The ReidOut” at 7pm for the 4th straight quarter; “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8pm for the 18th straight quarter; “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” at 10pm for the 24th straight quarter and “The 11th Hour with Brian Williams” at 11pm for the 19th straight quarter. On Saturdays, “VELSHI” from 8am-10am beat CNN for three of the last four quarters.

Writing for Fox News, Brian Flood addressed CNN and MSNBC’s poor ratings by citing experts. Cornell Law School professor and media critic William A. Jacobson told Fox News pointed out that the networks «were one-trick ponies, and that trick was bashing Trump.» Fox News contributor and columnist for The Hill Joe Concha predicted that the third quarter ratings could be even worse.

«Q3 will be even worse in looking at the trends for both networks, if that’s possible. The numbers are where they are because of two things: Their myopic ratings hook, Donald Trump, isn’t around anymore. But more importantly, these networks have a serious credibility problem,» Concha said, noting that left-wing stars from each network have recently generated negative headlines but went unpunished.

Fmr. Pres. Trump takes swipe at news media in latest statement: «CNN ratings are down 70%. MSDNC is also way down. Actually, they are ALL way down. A wonderful thing to see!»https://t.co/HFwaUf6EPS pic.twitter.com/W9EsmGKB3F

During his Saturday night rally in Sarasota, Florida, Trump suggested » I think one of my greatest achievements is explaining to people that the media in this country is corrupt and it’s corrupt.»