According to recent reports, former CNN host Don Lemon’s new show is struggling to retain an audience. “The Don Lemon Show” originally had a partnership agreement with X, but those plans were quickly canceled just hours after Lemon filmed the debut episode with Elon Musk.
Lemon’s show has seen a steep decline in viewership just after the second episode. Lemon was adamant that his show would still air despite the scrapped agreement with Musk. There is speculation that viewers only tuned in for the first episode to see what occurred during the interview with the Space X billionaire.
“Nobody is watching,” one individual told the New York Post. “Poor Don, he doesn’t realize people watched the first interview because of Elon — not him! Watching the Elon interview reminded everyone of how much they dislike Don.”
At the time of writing this article, Lemon’s second episode featuring tech journalist Kara Swisher garnered roughly 193,000 viewers on X and around 93,000 on YouTube. For reference, the interview with Musk garnered a massive viewing of 2 million views on X and over 1.2 million on YouTube.
Swisher, who has about 1.5 million followers on X, wasn’t even inclined to repost the interview on her page upon its release. “She knew it was so bad that she has ditched him and not promoted,” another media source claimed.
According to a statement from X, “The Don Lemon Show” did not effectively market the show following a massive launch with the widely viewed first interview with Elon Musk. The platform noted numerous other creators have taken advantage of the widespread capabilities on X.
“The second episode of The Don Lemon Show garnered twice the number of impressions and views on X compared to YouTube,” according to the statement from X. “But in contrast to numerous creators who have effectively harnessed the potential of X and its community, The Don Lemon Show did not employ any active advertising strategies to enhance the visibility of its organic posts on the platform and attract new viewers.”
A spokesperson for Don Lemon offered an optimistic perspective for the show’s future. “Don is one week into hosting a brand new show with a distribution model that is in its earliest stages for people who do what he does,” they said.
“Having reached more than 3 million people with his very first episode, it’s hard to imagine many content creators like him having a better launch,” the representative said on behalf of Lemon. “He’s thrilled, and looks forward to building his audiences across all the platforms he is working with.”
The American Tribune initially reported when the agreement between Lemon and Musk’s X had been scrapped. Elon provided his side of the story, explaining, “His approach was basically just ‘CNN, but on social media,’ which doesn’t work, as evidenced by the fact that CNN is dying.” He added, “And, instead of it being the real Don Lemon, it was really just Jeff Zucker talking through Don, so lacked authenticity. All this said, Lemon/Zucker are of course welcome to build their viewership on this platform along with everyone else.”
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