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Special Report
The Newswire
Take AIM Podcast
Cable news pioneer CNN ratings tumbled again last quarter continuing a trend that saw the network lose ground not just against Fox News but MSNBC and HLN. Ecevn longtime lynchpin Larry King started to lose his grip as he lost out to HLN’s Joy Behar a whopping 21 times in the quarter.
From the New York Times
CNN continued what has become a precipitous decline in ratings for its prime-time programs in the first quarter of 2010, with its main hosts losing almost half their viewers in a year.
The trend in news ratings for the first three months of this year is all up for one network, the Fox News Channel, which enjoyed its best quarter ever in ratings, and down for both MSNBC and CNN.
CNN had a slightly worse quarter in the fourth quarter of 2009, but the last three months have included compelling news events, like the earthquake in Haiti and the battle over health care, and CNN, which emphasizes its hard news coverage, was apparently unable to benefit.
The losses at CNN continued a pattern in place for much of the last year, as the network trailed its competitors in every prime-time hour. (CNN still easily beats MSNBC in the daytime hours, but those are less lucrative in advertising money, and both networks are far behind Fox News at all hours.)
About the only break from the bad news for CNN was that March was not as bad as February, when the network had its worst single month in its recent history, finishing behind not only Fox News and MSNBC, but also its sister network HLN — and even CNBC, which had Olympics programming that month.
CNN executives have steadfastly said that they will not change their approach to prime-time programs, which are led by hosts not aligned with any partisan point of view.
But the numbers are stark: For the network’s longest-running host, Larry King, who has always been regarded at CNN as the centerpiece of prime time because he drew the biggest audiences at 9 p.m., the quarter was his worst ever.
Mr. King’s audience dropped 43 percent for the quarter and 52 percent in March. He dropped to 771,000 viewers for the quarter from 1.34 million in 2009. More alarming perhaps, Mr. King, whose show has been regularly eclipsed by Rachel Maddow’s on MSNBC (and is almost quadrupled by Sean Hannity’s show on Fox), is now threatened by a new host, Joy Behar on HLN (formerly Headline News.)
In her first full quarter competing with Mr. King at 9 p.m. Ms. Behar wound up beating him in the ratings 21 times.
CNN has given no indication that any changes in its lineup are imminent, but recently announced that it would try a series of specials in a talk-show format at 11 p.m. with its current 10 p.m. host, Anderson Cooper. The specials are interpreted by some at the network as a trial run for a new 9 p.m. show with Mr. Cooper.
Mr. Cooper has long been regarded as the strongest host at CNN, but his show has suffered badly as well. For the quarter, Mr. Cooper dropped 42 percent in viewers and 46 percent among the 25-to-54-year-old audience that the news channels use for their sales to advertisers.
In the past, CNN relied on big audiences for Mr. King’s show to deliver viewers to Mr. Cooper. Now Mr. Cooper sometimes finds himself losing to repeats of shows on MSNBC and HLN. (At the other end of prime time, Campbell Brown’s show on CNN at 8 had its worst quarter ever with the 25-to-54-year-old audience.)
Even in the morning, CNN is sliding. Its “American Morning” show dropped behind “Morning Joe” on MSNBC in total viewers for the first time; it still beat the MSNBC show among 25- to 54-year-olds, though it was down 29 percent from a year earlier.
At the same time, Fox News, which had its biggest year in 2009, continues to add viewers. Greta Van Susteren’s show was up 25 percent from a year earlier. Bill O’Reilly, whose show commands the biggest audience in prime time with 3.65 million viewers, was up 28 percent, and Glenn Beck was up 50 percent from a year earlier.
CNN has not only lost viewers at a startling rate but also it’s identity. Lackluster shows and guests combined with a lack of any idea of what the network stands for or wants to be has left the onetime cable news champ in shambles.
Maybe they miss Ted Turner after all.
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About the author
Don Irvine is Chairman of Accuracy in Media. He is active on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow him @donirvine to read his latest thoughts.
6 Comments for CNN Ratings Continue Freefall, Behar Beats King
What a horrible divided hateful country Obama has made us ! Why are we even discussing CNN. They deserve to fail. They no longer do the job or reporting and objective watchdog reporting. They deserve to fail, lose their jobs, beg Obama for a job ….he can’t employ or reward all of them for sucking up to them. Wake up you liberal idiots.
Let CNN do one good story on this topic.
If Obama and the media had not worked so hard to hide his background, agenda, and ideology….do you think if the American people had known about him that he would have been elected? What an interesting story this would be. He is a pig in a poke. This is why the backlash and rejection is so big !! It’s simple folks.
I really tried to watch CNN, but when I didn’t hear all the news, I had to switch to Fox to get the real story.
Do you remember the put downs that CNN and MSNBC did when the Tea Parties were underway last year? They made jokes of our citizens calling them Teabaggers and arguing with them while they did what they tried to pass off as an ‘interview’. The American public didn’t forget. Then Lou Dobbs was kicked off and did a flip flop, showing he was only in it for the publicity. What a sad way for a network that was the leader so long ago to die. But they did it to themselves with their leftist crap.
What do we know about Obama? As Liberals Brokaw & C Rose said – “Not Much”
Our far left Media / Press protected Obama’s radical background. When you fill up all the Network news channels with ideologically identical far left Journalists who blindly think they are in the Center, even though they are falling off the left side of the cliff they all live on, they need some mental readjustments and reality checks. .
The public now knows how far left Obama is from his actions. They now know how well he has been schooled in Rules for Radicals and about his dozens of other extremist friends, thanks to Talk Radio, Fox News and a plethora of online Conservative sources. CNN like the others defended Obama’s lifelong relationship with radical anti-American activists. CNN defended Obama filling the White House with aides who are admitted Marxist, extreme radical far left Progressive, pro Gay, anti Christian ideologues. CNN like the others (except for Fox News) doesn’t get it. CNN needs to send all its finest anti-conservative hate mongers in for psychological reevaluation.
I think Obama is a Progressive Socialist Revolutionary and it’s appearing an easy case could be made that it’s his intent to load up the US Government Infrastructure with so many Progressive – Socialism – Marxist policies and programs and huge national debt that it would take a miracle to recover and go back to free enterprise.
Obama is one SCARY ScareCrow.
Larry King needs to retire ! I can’t stand to watch him for very long, even when he has a decent guest which I would enjoy listening to; and even when the subject is something other than politics ! He is a poor interviewer,as well as a poor listener, as far as I am concerned. Never have understood how he has lasted as long as he has.
Problem is that there are people who work for both News Corp and Time Warner. It is time to see whose side or they on: America or our enemies.
They include Dick Stockton, Pam Oliver, Joe Buck, Bernard Goldberg, Leigh Gallagher, Nina Easton, Adam Lashinsky, Adam Alexander, Ralph Sheheen, Kyle Petty, Matt Yocum, and Larry McReynolds.
Others who worked for Time Warner and News Corp, but are now at News Corp are Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and Frank Caliendo.
Finally a third group who used to work for Time Warner, but now for News Corp only are Glenn Beck, Greta van Sustern, Bill Hemmer, Major Garrett, and Denise Dillon.
The last two groups need to be medically inspected thoroughly, especially if they have had any medical “treatments” (read conditioning and programming) from Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN who is also a neurologist.