CNN loses in ratings to Food Network

Ratings at CNN continue to crater and it has fallen behind the Food Network and the History Channel with primetime viewers. Even with the sort of breaking news like the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson that once defined and boosted the network, CNN continued to slump. The subsequent manhunt for Thompson’s killer didn’t help either, nor did the ongoing controversies of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees or the then-looming regime change in Syria, Fox News reported.

Primetime stars like Anderson Cooper, Kaitlan Collins and Abby Phillip only averaged 367,000 viewers between 8 and 11 pm for the first week of December. Fox News is approaching an audience 10 times that size, getting 2.5 million primetime viewers. But CNN, the station that inaugurated 24/7 cable news, is now attracting fewer viewers than TNT, Food Network, Discovery, Hallmark Mysteries, TLC, TBS, History, HGTV, USA, MSNBC, the Hallmark Channel, and ESPN, coming in 17th place.

It is attracting even fewer people among the vital 25-54 crowd that tends to buy the products the station advertises, bringing in just 67,000 average demographic viewers. Even TV Land, MTV and Comedy Central beat CNN in this category, with the news outlet landing in 26th place.

Talk of CNN’s troubles have been common among media analysts for years but the sickness could now be terminal after disastrous Election Night coverage that was only outdone in the following weeks when ratings during the week of Nov. 25 plummeted to a level not seen since June 2001 when it averaged 268,000 viewers.

Carper Dulmage, who now works for KABC in Los Angeles, said, “'CNN is no longer significant,” as critics suggest the network has alienated audiences on both the left and the right, per the Daily Mail. With profits falling, CNN has announced it would be “laying off” hundreds of employees, largely in the news production sector but also in the news talent area.

An unnamed CNN source told Fox News that all the talk of layoffs is leaving the employees “very sad and deeply frustrated. Feelings which are pervasive throughout the organization among those who have been here a long time and feel a deep personal connection to having helped build the organization,” the source said.