Down, down, down….
It’s already been a rough year at CNN headquarters now that former President Donald J. Trump is no longer in the White House, costing the cable network dearly in terms of lost viewership and plummeting ratings.
For the duration of Trump’s historic four years in office, the self-proclaimed “most trusted name in news” waged a propaganda war against a duly elected president with the mission of running him out of Washington and providing Trump haters with a daily fix of wacky conspiracy theories, fake news, and hysteria but now that he’s gone, CNN is struggling badly.
To say that the ratings are horrific would be an understatement; the network is bleeding out and badly in need of a tourniquet having lost over half of its viewers since Trump packed up and headed to Mar-a-Lago; according to a Fox News report; “CNN averaged 2.2 million viewers during the first three weeks of 2021, but it has averaged just one million viewers since Biden took office, a staggering decline of 54 percent.”
Viewership suffered even worse declines with the crucial 25-54 demographic, a key audience in terms of advertising that suffered a staggering 60 percent dropoff.
"CNN has been hemorrhaging viewers since President Biden took office, with ratings down more than 50 percent in multiple categories since Inauguration Day….MSNBC lost 34 percent of its total-day viewers and 30 percent during primetime."https://t.co/nBM8Crujks
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 17, 2021
Fox reports that “it averaged 617,000 demo viewers from Dec. 28 through Inauguration Day but only 244,000 since Biden entered the White House,” which should be extremely worrisome to CNN management and shareholders who believed that going all-in on a jihad against Trump to the extent that long-term ratings were sacrificed for short-term gain was an effective business model
While such tomfoolery worked for a while as CNN’s stable of hosts whipped up hostility against Trump with a veritable freak show of regular guests including corrupt lawyer Michael Avenatti and adult film “actress” Stormy Daniels who became regulars in the prime time lineup. It was ratings gold but impossible to replicate over a prolonged period of time and the need to constantly up the stakes to keep their audience.
Adding to the network’s woes was the decision to end the long-running CNN Airport Network that was able to force-feed its leftist propaganda to a captive audience of stranded travelers in the nation’s airports. In January, CEO Jeff Zucker notified CNN employees that due to a “steep decline” in travel due to the COVID outbreak that the broadcasts will no longer be transmitted.
While the decrease in travel due to the pandemic could definitely be a factor, the absence of 24/7 negative coverage of Trump is clearly the major reason considering that DNC-Deep State organ MSNBC has also seen a major ratings decline since Biden’s installation.
It is also worth noting that before Trump stunned the world with his 2016 upset of the “unbeatable” Hillary Clinton that CNN’s ratings were in the tank with the network largely dependent on milking national disasters and chasing after missing airplanes and teenagers who vanished while on vacation.
There is some hope for CNN though, especially if it is a summer of racial violence which appears highly likely.
But even an extended period of anarchy isn’t going to be enough to save CNN from itself.