Media

CNN Falls Apart

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: February 18, 2023 10:53 am

Last Updated: February 18, 2023 10:54 am

Forget Don Lemon’s sexist comments to presidential candidate Nikki Haley. Something much worse is happening. CNN’s ratings are falling apart.

Lemon’s AM show, “CNN This Morning,” has the lowest ratings of any morning show in CNN’s history. This has to have undermined the new CNN chair and CEO Chris Licht’s reputation with his boss Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav. Zaslav has made brutal cuts across the company to save his reputation. Poor financial results and heavy debt have made Warner Bros. Discovery the most troubled big media public corporation. (These are the companies with the worst reputations in America.)

Licht has engineered Zaslav’s cutting at CNN. Now, the question is whether Licht cuts faster than the top-line falls.

CNN’s problem extends much beyond the morning. During President Joe Biden’s State of the Union, CNN drew fewer viewers than Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC, and MSNBC.

Fox News, hardly CNN’s best friend, recently reported, “CNN had a dismal 2022 from a viewership perspective, hitting all-time lows in various categories despite a busy year that saw everything from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to crucial midterm elections.”

Rating disasters of this magnitude cannot be fixed in short order. The problem runs from the early morning programs to those later than prime time. TVNewser’s data proves that the trouble has spread that widely.

Can CNN be fixed? It cannot be anytime soon because of how far it is behind the competition. (These are America’s highest-paying companies.)