CNN has seen ratings plummet following Donald Trump’s departure from the White House, down by over 50 percent across multiple categories since Inauguration Day, according to Fox News.
Last month, analysis of Nielsen data showed CNN had lost nearly 50 percent of viewers aged 25-to-54, a demographic considered most important to advertisers.
A new report by Fox News shows the rating decline has continued unabated for the anti-Trump network.
“CNN averaged 2.2 million viewers during the first three weeks of 2021, but it has averaged just one million viewers since Biden took office, a staggering decline of 54 percent,” they write.
The report indicates the vital 25-to-54 demographic numbers are worse, with the network dropping a brutal 60 percent.
— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) April 16, 2021
What could be driving the rating purge from CNN? Obviously, Trump’s departure is a serious blow to a network that for four years was focused less on delivering news and more on trying to drive the former President out of office.
Reporter Jim Acosta recently admitted earlier this month that journalists are suffering from “post-Trump stress disorder” since Biden’s inauguration.
He offered a hint of optimism, however, at the time.
“We did cover the news before Donald Trump came along, and we did it pretty well, and there’s going to be plenty of stuff in the news out there that doesn’t have to have Donald Trump in the headlines for us to continue to exist,” he assured viewers.
Maybe they aren’t doing it ‘pretty well’ anymore since viewers continue fleeing in droves.
.@Acosta says reporters are experiencing "post-Trump stress disorder" after Trump's White House tenure. pic.twitter.com/PGufIlVLS1
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 4, 2021
Perhaps it isn’t just Trump that CNN misses for their ratings. Perhaps it’s COVID-fatigue.
According to Fox News, an undercover video from Project Veritas purports to show a CNN employee claiming the network has been using the coronavirus pandemic to boost ratings.
“COVID? Gangbusters with ratings, right?” the staffer says in the video. “Which is why we constantly have the death toll on the side, which I have a major problem with, how we’re tallying how many people die every day.”
With that in mind, can you imagine the following clip airing today, where CNN anchor Don Lemon is brought to tears over the COVID diagnosis of his colleague Chris Cuomo?
Or the subsequent video showing Cuomo completely staging his emergence from his basement following a quarantine he had already admitted to breaking?
These aren’t news segments – they’re scripted daytime dramas meant to drive fear in the American people.
Video (2/2): @TuckerCarlson turns up the heat on Fredo @ChrisCuomo for acting like a "buff cable news Lazarus" when he's instead filled with "narcissism." With help from "shameless cheeseballs" at CNN, they created a scandal by demanding we stay locked in while he roams #Tucker pic.twitter.com/GLgE9hHa2n
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) April 22, 2020
Fox also reports that rating numbers show MSNBC lost 34 percent of its total-day viewers and 30 percent during primetime in the same timeframe.
Meanwhile, Fox has remained relatively steady with only single-digit declines since the Inauguration.
New York Post columnist Jonathan Levine had a solid response to CNN’s rating debacle, poking fun at a recent segment in which Brian Stelter ranted against Fox News for not showing ‘vaccine selfies’ in their programming.
“If an anchor gets vaccinated on air and nobody sees it, did it really happen?” he quipped.