News and Commentary

Can CNN’s Ratings Really Drop Any Further? (Hint: Yes. Yes They Can.)

   DailyWire.com

To hear the mainstream media tell it, America hates President Trump.

So, it stands to reason that a cable station that spends most of its time hating on Trump would soar in the ratings.

Think again.

The liberal network CNN plunged to 15th place in primetime over the last three months, losing nearly 20% of its viewership in the process.

The stats are striking when one compares CNN to Fox News. Fox has 2.4 million primetime viewers, CNN just 761,000. Total day numbers: Fox 1.32 million; CNN 541,000. Those numbers equate to a 2% drop for Fox News — but a whopping 18% plunge for CNN.

CNN’s best-rated show was “Cuomo Prime Time,” which came in at No. 25, but fell short of a million viewers at 936,000. Anderson Cooper drew 892,000 viewers, Don Lemon 833,000 viewers and Jake Tapper just 699,000.

Meanwhile, Rachel Maddow’s ratings at MSNBC have also plunged. The liberal hostess pushed the Russia-Trump collusion for more than two years, but special counsel Robert Mueller’s report said there was insufficient evidence to prove the charge.

In May, Maddow’s show suffered its worst ratings since Trump took office, losing 500,000 viewers, Fox News reported.

There appears to be a direct connection to the Mueller report, which was released April 18. In the first quarter of 2019, Maddow averaged 3.1 million viewers each night. But in May, she averaged just 2.6 million viewers.

“Maddow lost nearly 500,000 viewers for her first episode following the release of Barr’s letter,” Fox reported. “Then she plummeted 13 percent in April compared to the same month in 2018, according to TVNewser, falling behind ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ in the process. In May she averaged 2.6 million – her worst month since Trump took office – and a far cry from the 3.1 million viewers she averaged during the first quarter of 2019.”

Back to CNN, some conservatives who once appeared regularly on the show have been let go, with one complaining that it is now the “hate Trump” network.

“Most of us got squeezed out involuntarily,” Jack Kingston, a former Georgia congressman who appeared on the network, told Mediaite. “I was there for two years and was certainly willing to continue. It was clear to me in the end that the Republicans they prefer are anti-Trump Republicans.”

The network also canned economic analyst Stephen Moore after Trump said he was going to nominate him to serve on the Federal Reserve Board. CNN and other outlets reported about old comments Mr. Moore made about women and President Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, and Moore withdrew his name from consideration.

Moore wasn’t happy. “CNN is the hate Trump network,” he said. “They just trash Trump every single hour of every single day. All they’ve talked about for two years is the [special counsel Robert] Mueller report — and how bad does it make them look now that it proved nothing?”

After Mueller’s highly anticipated report on alleged collusion between Trump and Russia came and went in April with a whimper, CNN’s prime-time ratings plunged 26% from the same period in 2018. CNN suffered its lowest-rated month in viewers since October 2015, according to Nielsen Media Research’s ratings. CNN had just 767,000 average prime-time viewers, down from 1.04 million in April 2018.

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