The New York Times reports that CNN has hit the basement floor. Hat tip to intrepid reader George Mason.
CNN, which invented the cable news network more than two decades ago, will hit a new competitive low with its prime-time programs in October, finishing fourth – and last – among the cable news networks with the audience that all the networks rely on for their advertising.
Individually, the CNN shows were beaten resoundingly by all the Fox News programs, but also lost to all of the MSNBC programs, including a repeat of Keith Olbermann's 8 p.m. edition of "Countdown," which beat the 10 p.m. hour of CNN's signature prime-time program, "Anderson Cooper 360."
For the month, CNN averaged 202,000 viewers between the ages of 25 and 54 – the group that television news organizations use as their basis of success because of their advertising sales. That was far behind the dominant leader, Fox News, which averaged 689,000. But it also trailed MSNBC, which had 250,000 viewers in that group and HLN, which had 221,000.
Now that is about as bad as bad news gets for a TV network. When your "signature" prime time show gets beat by a two hour old rerun on the second place network, well… CNN's decline has been precipitous. By contrast, Fox News' dominance continues to be amazing. Fox is drawing more views than the next three networks combined.
All this calls for some explanation. The Times thoughtfully provides one:
The results demonstrate once more the apparent preference of viewers for opinion-oriented shows from the news networks in prime time.
That would provide a little emotional comfort to CNN: we are dying because we are more virtuous. Except that it isn't true.
At 7 p.m. CNN's host, Lou Dobbs was fourth, barely beaten by Jane Velez Mitchell on HLN, 166,000 to 162,000. The big winner was Shepard Smith on Fox with 465,000 viewers. Second was Chris Matthews and "Hardball" on MSNBC, with 179,000 viewers.
Shepard Smith's show is a traditional news hour, presenting a series of stories from the day's news. Lou Dobbs and Chris Matthews are "opinion-oriented" if anyone is. Dobbs, in fact, is on the other side of Glen Beck. But Shepard Smith still draws more than twice as many viewers as both shows combined.
Why do people watch cable news in prime time? They watch it because they don't want to watch what is offered on the main networks (mostly non-news programming) or the non-news content of cable. Among that news hungry crowd, Fox is cleaning up.
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