Not even a new president can stop the free fall of CNN’s rankings

CNN Classification problems persisteven with an entirely new vision and a different boss at the helm.

Since he officially took over the network at the beginning of May, Chris Licht It has already made sweeping changes to CNN in an effort to make it less politically divisive and more neutral in its tone.

After a turbulent few months that saw the chaotic ouster of top-rated broadcaster Chris Cuomo and longtime president Jeff Zucker, along with the immediate shutdown of the very expensive and live streaming service, Licht came with his cut business. And from the start, he promised things would be very different in the cable news major.

Speaking to potential advertisers in mid-May, Licht pledged that CNN “will seek a different approach” during a time “when extremisms dominate satellite news.” Since then, he It is said that CNN characters have been evaluated Who can be considered too partisan, especially the hosts and commentators who are often seen as liberal activists.

In addition, he issued a series of new guidelines to guide CNN’s new direction, including advocating Network Offers To reduce their use of “breaking news” logos, and provide graphics for really breaking news. yacht May also appeal with producers Stop calling former President Donald Trump’s fake election “the big lie”, and instead ask them to use terms like “Trump election lie” or “election lies” to avoid the emergence of partisanship.

So far, even Media critics And the right-wing critics It has been speculated that heading to the middle might increase viewership for CNN among more moderate and conservative viewers, but the network has yet to see any such results in the short term.

In fact, ratings have only continued to drop since the start of the Licht era.

“This assumption is unfair and inaccurate. The only “mass change” to programming in the past 60 days has been the directive to be more selective about the use of the breaking news banner. A CNN spokesperson told The Daily Beast after this article was published: It would be ridiculous for anyone to expect such a move alone to have an impact on the ratings.”

For the month of June, despite the January 6 House committee holding several massive hearings that were meant to be live in the channel’s cockpit, CNN actually lost viewership from the previous month. Even worse, the network has already experienced a decline in the past two months.

CNN’s primetime list drew just 654,000 viewers and 148,000 in the main ad demographic for viewers aged 25 to 54 — a 1 percent drop in both categories from May. In total daily viewership, CNN’s overall audience fell to 487,000 while it attracted 104,000 viewers in demo 25-54, dropping 3 percent and 2 percent, respectively.

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During the week of June 13-19, which was marked by a great deal of focus on committee hearings, the network averaged just 480,000 viewers, a 13 percent drop from its May averages and the channel’s worst week since November 2015. .

June 2022 was CNN’s lowest-rated month in total views of the day since July 2015.

By comparison, MSNBC saw significant gains from the previous month as viewers appeared to be flocking to the channel not only to watch the January 6 hearings but also to get analysis on what was revealed.

In addition to the fact that the average session viewership for any network has never exceeded MSNBC’s audience of 3 million, it ranked second on all major cables in total viewership today with 767,000 viewers, up 21 percent from May. MSNBC also achieved second place in total prime-time viewers with 1.28 million, an increase of 26 percent from the previous month. And while the old channel’s beta audiences were lower than CNN’s, MSNBC still enjoyed double-digit gains in both its prime (30 percent) and today’s total (23 percent).

In May, meanwhile, CNN’s total viewership dropped 5% (660,000) and 11% in the 25-54 age group (150,000) from April. It saw worse losses for today’s total audience, suffering a 20 percent drop in demo (106K) and 14 percent in total viewership (500K). In both May and June, CNN ranked only 12th by primetime primary cable.

Meanwhile, the free fall of the CNN audience over the past two months has been even more dangerous if we consider that the free fall of the network audience April has already seen a significant drop in sales from Marchwhich included daily breaking news about the Russian invasion of Ukraine

The image also looks somewhat bleak for CNN when reduced to a file The second quarter of this year.

While MSNBC and conservative cable giant Fox News both saw a modest decline in viewership compared to the first quarter of 2022, CNN saw a double-digit decline across the board. And while Fox increased its audience from the second quarter of 2021, when it was experiencing its first recovery from its post-election slump, CNN saw significant losses compared to last year. (To be fair, MSNBC has shrunk significantly in all categories from its second-quarter numbers for 2021.)

Suffice to say, the constant erosion of CNN’s linear audience almost certainly weighs on Licht. But he may have a solution.

earlier this month, Bloomberg mentioned That Licht is exploring ways for the network to make money that don’t rely on its Nielsen ratings. One potential plan is to create individual news sections available for sponsorship by advertisers.

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