Ever since Trump left office and President Brandon stepped into the White House, the mainstream media’s ratings have taken a severe nosedive. One of the worst-off networks is CNN, a network that severely damaged its credibility during the Trump years.
That network, once a major player in the media market and the recipient of Trump’s most vociferous attacks, has seen its viewership drop to below 1 million viewers per show in October. In fact, with the exceptions of the 90-minute Biden town hall, which averaged 1.2 million viewers, and the post-town hall “Cuomo Prime Time” segment, which averaged 1.1 million viewers, not a single CNN show in October averaged even a million views, according to a Fox News report.
Adding further perspective, the Fox article adds that “CNN averaged a devastating 480,000 in total day viewership in October, a whopping 76% drop from January amid the chaotic transition from President Trump to President Biden. Fox News averaged 1.4 million and maintained its total day viewership from earlier this year while MSNBC averaged 657,000 viewers in October, resulting in a 61% drop from January. The network lost 14% of its viewers from September.”
Even CNN’s primetime slots, the weeknight programs, barely saw an average of 780,000 viewers, a 78% drop from January. For perspective from both the right and left, “Hannity” had a massive average of 2.7 million viewers, and “The Rachel Maddow” show averaged about 2 million. Both programs appear in the 9 pm EST time slot.
Jon Nicosia, in a tweet, added that if CNN and Discovery’s merger happened today, CNN’s program would be blown out of the water by “Shark Week”:
He has to do something dramatic. If merged today ‘Shark Week’ would eclipse every show on @cnn by a mile.
— Jon Nicosia (@NewsPolitics) November 11, 2021
Those significant hits to the network’s viewership mean that it needs to make major changes to its programming, which it now appears to be doing. According to ZeroHedge, those changes mean the program will have to make significant changes to both what content it airs and who it puts on air. ZeroHedge reports that:
“According to Jon Nicosia – former Mediaite and IJR managing editor (and former breaking news editor at the DC Examiner) – CNN is going to revert to a 100% news channel, and a “good number” of CNN’s “talent/staff” will be fired as part of a major shakeup.”
An alternative to reverting to simple news programming, ZeroHedge adds, might be replacing some of the primetime programmings with documentaries, one of the few types of CNN programming that haven’t performed terribly over the past year.
Regardless of whether the network switches back to news or jumps feet-first into documentaries, what is obvious is that a large chunk of CNN’s current “talent” will be forced out as part of the shakeup, as their “talents” won’t be required by a network that focuses mainly on the actual news and/or documentaries rather than far-left opinions.
Who exactly will be fired, however, is still up in the air, with CNN’s incoming head staying subtle and not even announcing what will happen to Jeff Zucker, the current CEO, under whose watch CNN has crashed and burns. ZeroHedge reports that:
According to Deadline, Discovery chief David Zaslav – who is widely expected to assume stewardship of CNN after its merger with WarnerMedia is complete – has kept his public comments on the failing news network close to the vest. When asked by Deadline what he thinks will happen with honcho Jeff Zucker, Zaslav said “Jeff’s a good friend and I like him a lot.”
So, while questions remain and how exactly this shakeup will play out still up in the air, all we can say for certain is that collapsing CNN understands, at the very least, that major changes need to be made if it’s to get its credibility back and ratings up. Whether whatever changes it decides on are enough to affect that change remains to be seen.
By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.
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