"You have every right to be outraged and angry and never watch this network again," Anderson Cooper said following the Trump town hall.
This collapse in viewership comes during the first full five-weekday period since hosting a town hall with former president Donald Trump, during which CNN temporarily skyrocketed in viewership due to his presence.
Now, the network has suffered its worst weekly ratings since 2015.
Viewership is down across the board, but CNN's primetime slots were hit hardest, with the veteran network attracting a smaller audience than smaller outlets such as Newsmax.
The town hall took place on May 10, and according to the Daily Beast, CNN averaged only 429,000 total daily viewers for the period between Monday, May 15 and Friday, May 19. That marked the lowest weekly viewership since June 2015, the same month Trump rode down the escalator at the Manhattan skyscraper that bears his name and announced he was running for president.
Compared to the same period last year, viewership was down double digits in general, and among the critical 25-54 demographic.
In recent months, the network has attempted to get people excited about tuning in again, but even their most hyped headliners have failed to live up to expectations. Chris Wallace's Friday night interview program, for instance, only managed to garner 224,000 total viewers.
The day after the town hall took place, Anderson Cooper devoted a segment of his show to suggesting that perhaps CNN didn't deserve to have viewers.
"You have every right to be outraged and angry and never watch this network again," he said. "Many of you think CNN shouldn't have given him any platform to speak and I understand the anger about that - giving him the audience, the time, I get that."
While Fox News more than tripled CNN's daily viewership for that week, it has also struggled to recoup losses suffered as the result of Tucker Carlson's firing. The decision to let go of one of its most popular hosts resulted in many conservative viewers swapping over to Newsmax, which has seen a boost in ratings as of late.
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