Things just keep getting worse and worse for CNN, which isn’t recovering well from the anti-Trump bonanza of the Zucker years now that Christ Licht has taken over as CEO and instead has continued to fail, with ratings racing ever lower.
In fact, CNN just experienced its lowest ratings in nine years. That was the week of Jan. 16 through Jan. 22, 2023. During that brutally bad week, CNN, according to Nielsen, averaged just 444,000 viewers in primetime. Among those viewers were a mere 93,000 in the all-important age 25-54 demographic prized by advertisers.
And the network’s results for the rest of the day were even worse. During non-prime time hours, CNN drew in only 417,000 total viewers, of whom about 80,000 were of the prized demographic. That’s the first time since May of 2014 that CNN failed to bring in 450,000 average viewers.
Yet worse, though those results were terrible, an insider said things are going to get even worse for the network, telling TheWrap that ”Upcoming programming changes likely to make matters worse.” Yikes.
Adding credence to that perspective is that the network’s new show and Chris Licht’s main effort so far, “CNN This Morning,” is also doing poorly and, during the week of Jan. 16 through Jan. 22, suffered the lowest week since its launch. During that terrible week, it averaged just 331,000 viewers.
CNN’s results are even worse when viewed in comparison to CNN’s main competitors, Fox News Channel and MSNBC.
During the same one-week period Fox News Channel drew in an average of 1.4 million viewers, of whom 176,000 were in the prized advertising demographic. MSNBC, meanwhile, brought in 629,000 total viewers. Of them, 69,000 were in the rarget demographic.
The discrepancy during prime time was even more obvious and painful for CNN. During that time block, Fox News Channel garnered about 2 million average viewers, of whom 256,000 were in the demo. MSNBC had 943,000 viewers and 91,000 in the demo. That’s compared to CNN bringing in less than 450,000 viewers during even prime time.
Reporting on the ratings disaster at CNN, TheWrap noted that:
Some especially troublesome news out of this week’s Nielsen numbers is that Licht’s primary programming move, “CNN This Morning,” also suffered the lowest week since its launch just three months ago. It averaged just 331,000 viewers while “Fox & Friends” had nearly 1 million and “Morning Joe” drew 760,000.
Licht hand-picked CNN’s Don Lemon, Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins to host the rebooted morning show. But so far that trio is failing to grow its audience. An individual with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap exclusively last week that EP Eric Hall was being reassigned to “CNN Tonight,” hosted by Laura Coates, signaling that Licht is aware that the show needs to perform better.
Insiders also told TheWrap that even hosts Lemon, Harlow and Collins “seem to be growing frustrated” over the direction.
“The show can’t decide strategically what exactly it is, so it’s trying to be everything which can create whiplash for a viewer when segments seem off-brand in tonality,” one insider said. “The audience for morning news on network TV is different than the cable news audience and since we’re not gaining new viewers we definitely need to retain our legacy ones”
So things aren’t great at CNN…and insiders say they’re likely going to get worse.
By: Will Tanner. Follow me on Twitter @Will_Tanner_1
