Rich Welsh| The new year was looking great for the Fox News Channel that came in as the #1 basic cable network from January 3 through January 9. I’m sure they popped a lot of corks in celebrations inside Fox studios around the country.
In contrast, CNN learned that their ratings are a train wreck. The troubled network is showing stunning declines, losing almost 90% of its early 2021 viewership in numerous categories during the same time period this year. YIKES!
The Trump-hater news network averaged 2.7 million viewers from January 4 through January 10, 2021 when they got a pithy post-election bump and then spiraled down to only 548,000 average viewers last week. The network experienced a shocking loss of 80% of its total audience.
Fox averaged 1.4 million total viewers in the same time period, showing just a 15% drop when compared to the first week of 2021, when media anchors and pundits went nuts over a news cycle that included the January 6 Capitol riot.
Fox News has since beaten CNN and MSNBC both combined for 21 weeks in a row. Fox also beat ESPN’s 1.1 million viewers to finish as the most-watched basic cable option.
CNN’s horrific decline (which we all knew was coming) was even worse for the demographic that all news networks fight to grab, which is “adults ages 25-54,” and CNN lost 86% of those viewers. They ended up last week with only 113,000 average viewers in that demographic category compared to an average of 822,000 only a year ago.
That’s what happens when you go 24/7 Trump-hater. Eventually, presidents go away and sadly for CNN’s shareholders, the brain trust at the network didn’t know how to pivot off of Trump most of last year.
CNN also lost close to 90% of the 18-49 demographic going from 624,000 last year to an embarrassing 73,000.
MSNBC, which I always thought stood for More Silly Nonsense By Communists, didn’t do that much better than CNN. The conspiracy network lost 67% of their total audience, 80% of the coveted 25-54 demographic, and 83% of younger viewers. Again, YIKES! They averaged 88,000 viewers among the key demographic group to end up behind CNN!
Fox News destroyed them both with 223,000 average viewers in the key demographic group, and they kept at least 65% of their viewers in all of their total daytime categories.
The most noticeable drop for CNN was during prime time hours, which is between 8 and 11 pm, probably the worst time spots to lose advertising dollars, when it went from 4.2 million total viewers in the first week of 2021 down to 705,000 viewers last week. That’s an 83% crash when looking at year over year comparisons. What’s even worse, CNN lost 89% of its prime time viewership from the key demo group and they lost 91% of the young audience demographic.
To show you that CNN is not filled with very bright people, on January 7, 2021, the day after the January 6 mostly peaceful protest, CNN network anchors bragged about the coverage of the riot ending up being the most watched day of the network’s history. Many people took to social media to make fun of them for tweeting out about ratings grabs for a day that they labeled as the darkest day in American history.
Can you imagine what it must be like for Jim Acosta not having a Trump press conference where he can act like a smacked butt cheek while degrading journalism for everyone else single-handedly?
Folks, this is huge news. CNN went from 5.3 million viewers on January 6, 2021 and couldn’t even break 1.5 million at any time of the day a year later even thought they ran January 6 anniversary shows throughout the day, netting the failed network just 743,000 viewers on January 6, 2022. That’s an 86% drop.
Those numbers are abysmal, and what’s worse is I really think a great number of the ratings are from airports and people who have died with the television on and haven’t yet been discovered. Someone had to say it.
