Yet more news has rolled in for CNN and its owner, Warner Bros. Discovery, which, rather than turning the ailing news network around, has seen former viewers desert it in droves, even after the CEO has now been replaced multiple times and content strategies from more balanced to more leftist has been tried out. Even firing some of the most ridiculed “talent” like Brian Stelter doesn’t seem to have helped.
As background, while mocking CNN for its plight is fun, cable TV generally is in a bad way, as shown by Warner Bros. Discovery’s general decline. Though CNN isn’t managing is decline as Fox News Channel, cable TV generally has found itself hard-pressed to compete with streaming services on one hand and internet news, whether of the X (formerly Twitter) variety or more traditional news sites.
So, overall, Warner Bros. Discovery saw its revenue from advertising on its television programs plunge dramatically in the recent quarter, falling by about 11 percent. In fact, the revenue falloff was so steep that Warner Bros. Discovery missed its earnings targets and its stock tumbled by close to 4 percent in pre-market trading Thursday. Its stock managed to recover those losses on Thursday and Friday, though it is still down over the past month.
Commenting on the reasons for the advertising revenue crash, executives at Warner Bros. Discovery noted that news network audiences are declining, hinting that CNN’s viewership woes are part of the problem. Those executives said, Breitbart News reports, “audience declines in domestic general entertainment and news networks, as well as the soft linear advertising market in the U.S. and Latin America.”
Adweek’s data from March of 2024 indicates that CNN is indeed seeing a severe problem with viewership. In fact, while Fox News and MSNBC vie for being the top two channels and each have shows in the top 15, CNN has no shows in Adweek’s top 15 cable news programs by ratings. In fact, its best, Anderson Cooper 360, was way down in the no. 32 spot overall and no. 20 on the 25-54 demographic preferred by advertisers.
Commenting on CNN generally, Adweek reported, “CNN landed in third place in total viewers in primetime and total day with 601,000 and 462,000 viewers, respectively. The A25-54 demo had 124,000 viewers and 85,000 viewers in primetime and total day, respectively.” That stands in contrast to Fox News, which saw “2.135 million total viewers/246,000 Adults 25-54. In total day, it had 1.306 million/158,000 viewers in both categories, respectively.”
And while CNN’s rantings have improved somewhat from 2023, as Adweek also noted, it still faces the near-future problem of American households cutting the cord en masse. In fact, a recent study shows that less than 40 percent of American homes will even have cable television in just four years, a far cry from cable’s dominance in the near past.
Thus, what used to be a huge source of revenue for studios like Warner Bros. Discovery will continue facing the headwind of fewer people watching its TV programs, and so less advertising revenue from those programs. Given the failure of CNN+, its attempt at a streaming service, it remains to be seen if and how cable news like CNN will remain relevant in a cord-cutting future.
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