'CNN This Morning' Sees Brutal Ratings in First Show Despite Pulling Out All Stops
In 2013, newly minted CNN president Jeff Zucker created “New Day” to compete with the morning shows on MSNBC and Fox News.
Alas for Zucker: The show never managed to garner the audience the other cable networks did with “Morning Joe” and “Fox & Friends.”
Now it’s 2022, and newly minted CNN chairman and CEO Chris Licht has created “CNN This Morning” in hopes of — you guessed it — competing with MSNBC and Fox News.
Second verse, same as the first.
“CNN This Morning” debuted Tuesday to what Mediaite could only describe as “brutally lackluster ratings,” performing even worse than “New Day” had previously in CNN’s morning slot.
“‘CNN This Morning’ on Tuesday drew 387,000 total viewers and 71,000 viewers in the advertiser-coveted 25-54 age demographic,” Mediaite reported yesterday. “That was down from the 404,000 total viewers and 78,000 demo viewers CNN’s ‘New Day’ averaged in October.”
In comparison, “Morning Joe” pulled in an average of 883,000 total viewers and 100,000 viewers in the 25-54 bracket, and “Fox & Friends” did even better, with 1.4 million total and 211,000 in that demographic.
Yikes.
As a side note, I will turn 55 next June, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, so I’m going to make the most of the next seven months or so, after which I will apparently no longer be “advertiser-coveted.” I wonder if that means I’ll get fewer spam emails inviting me to sign up for credit cleaning services or identity protection. Probably not.
Co-hosts Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins are still in that coveted demographic however — at 40 and 30, respectively — but Don Lemon has a couple of years on me, although he doesn’t look it.
At least not on-camera.
Licht’s decision to bring in these three well-known CNN personalities, even pulling Lemon from prime time to add him to the team, meant that industry watchers — including advertisers — were probably expecting something better than under-performing “New Day,” which was doing bad enough already. According to Mediaite, Licht had been working to tamp down expectations for the show’s debut.
Here’s a clip, which I assume was shared because they consider it one of the better moments of the program, but it left me asking the same question Lemon asked: Is this a rehearsal?
…And we’re off! Hope you’ll join us! #CNNThisMorning @donlemon @kaitlancollins @CNN pic.twitter.com/Gilj339n5u
— Poppy Harlow (@PoppyHarlowCNN) November 1, 2022
Meanwhile, for the 20th consecutive month, Fox News came in as the most-watched cable television network, with a significantly heftier viewership than its competition both in general and in one key demographic: Hispanics.
Fox is, of course, cable news’ answer to the otherwise predominantly left-leaning array of talking head networks, so the fact that it performs so well with audiences in general as well as this key voting bloc is worthy of note less than one week ahead of the midterm elections.
A whopping 13 Fox programs topped the list of the most-watched on cable news, garnering 55 percent of prime-time cable news viewers and 54 percent of total day, and beating out CNN and MSNBC in both total overall viewers and preference among viewers in that 25 to 54 demographic, Mediaite reported.
In October, Fox enjoyed an average 1.48 million overall daytime viewers compared to 751,000 for MSNBC and just 533,000 for CNN. For prime-time averages, this jumped to 2.29 million for Fox compared to 1.18 million for MSNBC and 624,000 for CNN.
Forbes noted that MSNBC’s viewership in the 25 to 54 demo saw a 20 percent drop, the largest among cable news networks.
Meanwhile, the top five most-watched shows on cable all aired on Fox. “The Five” came in at No. 1 for the seventh consecutive month, joined by “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” “Jesse Watters Primetime,” “Hannity” and “Special Report with Brett Baier,” which came in second through fifth, respectively.
Mediaite noted that according to Nielsen data, Fox beat out CNN and MSNBC — even among Democrats and independents, as well as among Hispanic and Asian viewers.
But don’t worry, Chris Licht. Tomorrow is a “New Day.”
What? Too soon?
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