CNN brass thought their town hall with Donald Trump would help them. They thought they would draw in huge ratings and lure in a new demo: angry MAGA folk who tend to lean on Fox News and Newsmax. The event did okay. (It paled compared to an earlier town hall…with Joe Biden.) Worse, ever since its ratings have somehow gotten worse.
As per The Daily Beast, last week — a week after the disastrous airing — the cable news giant suffered their lowest-rated week since June 2015 (when Trump announced his 2016 campaign, fittingly enough). From last Monday to last Friday, CNN averaged a mere 429,000 total viewers. For some context, that’s down double digits compared to the same week last year.
CNN’s town hall enraged a lot of their target audience, and the result appears to be its primetime shows, including 360 with Anderson Cooper, fell behind the fringe-right Newsmax. On Friday, their much-hyped interview show with former Fox News guy Chris Wallace averaged a scant 224,000 viewers — also behind Newsmax.
They’re not the only once-powerful 24-hours network suffering these days. Ever since Fox News canned Tucker Carlson, they’ve been down 41 percent among the much-coveted 25-54 demographic, and 24 percent total. Primetime is where they’re suffering the most, with overall viewership down 38 percent. Where are all its regular viewers going? That’s right: Newsmax, which is one reason they’re outperforming CNN.
But Newsmax isn’t doing as hot as MSNBC, which has seen its audience shoot up a whopping 44 percent. Where are those viewers coming from? CNN. Everything is connected.
The Trump town hall hasn’t only hurt CNN. It also hurt Trump himself, who is now getting sued again by E. Jean Carroll because he defamed the day after being found guilty of defamation and sexual assault. Meanwhile, David Zaslav, head of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN, is busy getting booed and heckled by graduating students.
(Via The Daily Beast)