Chris Wallace first left Fox News Channel to much fanfare, heading to CNN because of the conservative turn FNC had taken. Speaking on the “why” behind his decision at the time, Wallace said “I just no longer felt comfortable with the programming at Fox.”
Continuing, he said “I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion. But when people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? — I found that unsustainable.”
Well, since he left, things haven’t gone well for Wallace. He was supposed to headline CNN+, but that got shot down after a month and Wallace’s high-profile interview show flushed down the drain with it.
From there, he moved over to CNN’s cable programming with another new show, Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?. Unfortunately for him, people don’t really seem to care about who’s talking to Chris Wallace, as they haven’t really tuned into watch it.
In fact, according to new Nielsen data, Chris Wallace’s new show brought in just 365,000 viewers on average in January, with only 48,000 of them being in the 25-54 age bracket coveted by advertisers. He did even worse than that in the last week of January, bringing in just 323,000 average viewers and 38,000 in the advertising demographic. The Washington Examiner, adding context to that dismal ratings report, noted that:
Former Fox News anchor Chris Wallace’s prime-time CNN venture saw its worst ratings month since its launch.
In January, CNN’s Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? averaged just 365,000 viewers. Only 48,000 of them were in the coveted 25- to 54-year-old demographic, according to Nielsen data.
On Sunday, the show’s last airing of January, it averaged 323,000 viewers and 38,000 in the 25-54 demographic.
Adding a point of comparison, The Washington Examiner noted that “Comparatively, Fox News’s Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy averaged more than 1 million viewers in January, with more than double the number of key demographic viewers tuning in.”
The Daily Caller, adding more points of comparison, noted that “In comparison, Fox News’ “Fox & Friends Sunday” raked in 1.544 million viewers and Mark Levin’s program on Fox News, “Life, Liberty and Levin,” garnered 1.129 million views.”
Further, the Daily Caller noted that these new ratings are a decline from already dismal ratings in the fall, saying:
Wallace’s program suffered low ratings in September by raking in 401,000 viewers and 44,000 were in the 25-54 demo. The longtime anchor left the widely watched “Fox News Sunday” in December 2021 after his growing frustration with the network’s coverage of former President Donald Trump and the Capitol riot.
CNN suffered historically low ratings in 2022 following mass layoffs and budgetary issues since the network’s president, Chris Licht, took over. The network averaged a little over a half million viewers in a day, and slightly over 120,000 in the key 25-54-year-old advertiser demographic. The network’s profitability sank below $1 billion for the first time in 2016 due to the rise of digital subscriptions.
At the start of 2023, the network witnessed its lowest numbers in nine years after averaging just 444,000 viewers in primetime and 93,000 in the 25-54 demo, The Wrap reported. Its new morning program, “CNN This Morning,” suffered its lowest week since its launch at the end of January after raking in 331,000 views.
By: Will Tanner. Follow me on Twitter @Will_Tanner_1
Chris Wallace photo By Maryland GovPics – Interview with Chris Wallace, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45025210
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