CNN Drops to Last Place Among Cable News Networks

[Newsjock]

Source: New York Times

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.

The official monthly numbers will be finalized at 4 p.m. Monday and will include results from Friday. CNN executives conceded that will not change the competitive standing for the month. CNN will still be last in prime time.

That means CNN’s programs were behind not only Fox News and MSNBC, but even its own sister network HLN (formerly Headline News.) That was the first time CNN had finished that poorly with its prime-time shows.

The results demonstrate once more the apparent preference of viewers for opinion-oriented shows from the news networks in prime time.



Read more: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/cnn-drops-to-last-place-among-cable-news-networks/

[Ian David]

1. The bad news is, that means Fox "News" is ahead of them. n/t

[kenfrequed]

16. Of course...

They have an absolutely fanatically dedicated fanbase that would rather watch Glenn Beck than take the occasional break to watch SGU or skip the news completely and read a paper instead.

Fox is the consumate party-paper for the video age.

[marshall]

36. It would be interesting to see a timeline comparision of the ratings

CNN invented the business and soared for years. When exactly did the downturn begin? I've tried to find a graph online that compares the major cable news over the course of several years but can't find it.

[Ian David]

42. Downturn began when the second gulf war became an occupation.

When we stopped seeing smart-bomb "fireworks" set to music.

[bc3000]

44. Maybe they should try a "news" format rather than all the Entertainment Tonight programming

Why can;t we have nice things, like the BBC?

[Cha]

48. Yes, but everyone knows faux is a propaganda machine for

the failed republicons.

cnn has been more sneaky but apparently not very interesting.

[No Elephants]

73. With the exception of Olberman, Shultz and Maddow, FOX, CNN and MSNBC are ALL Republicon propaganda

machines. It's only a question of how overt or covert each is.

[alp227]

69. What about Lou Dobbs?

I dunno why Fox News is ahead of CNN even if CNN has Lou Dobbs, who some believe contributed to CNN's downfall.

[AndyA]

2. Is what CNN does still called news?

I hadn't noticed. Of course, I don't watch anymore. CNN is trying to be Faux Lite and it isn't working. They should give it up and sell to Ted Turner, then I'll bet they get some viewers back (and drop the propaganda).

[Oregone]

5. Im not aware of any decent US cable news networks

Its all just commentary catering to a targeted demographic

[Oregone]

3. Maybe John King can carry this story on one of those interactive screens bigger than him

That would help

[CitizenLeft]

9. LOL!

Can't stand him.

[BlackX-068]

21. Now...

that was worthy of reading during CNN prime time!!! Very creative and VERY FUNNY! And TRUE.

[fujiyama]

55. Or more Princess Leia holograms

nt

[zonkers]

4. Put Ted Turner back at the helm!

[CrispyQ]

6. Rick Sanchez is about the only one I can stand to watch, but he's early afternoon.

CNN's prime time line up is Campbell Brown (or is she an hour too early to be considered prime time?), Larry King & Anderson Cooper. :eyes: None of them is worth wasting the time to watch.

on edit: I may be wrong, but I think that Cooper's two hour show is really just an hour show whcih they repeat for the second hour.

[WriteDown]

18. I stopped watching Sanchez...

after he killed that guy.

I like Cooper's show though. That may be because he reminds me of Race Bannon from Johnny Quest though.

[CrispyQ]

24. ???

Rick Sanchez killed a guy?

[WriteDown]

26. Oh yeah,....

From Wikipedia:

On December 10, 1990, Sanchez struck a pedestrian, Jeffrey Smuzinick, with his car on a residential street near Dolphin Stadium after Smuzinick darted into the road.<6> Smuzinick was paralyzed and eventually died in an assisted living facility in 1995.<6><7> Sanchez, who had just left an NFL football game with his father (and left the scene of the accident), was not charged with causing the accident, but was charged with and pleaded no contest to DUI.<6>

I believe the "darted into the road part" was claimed by Sanchez, but he was drunk as a skunk.

[CrispyQ]

35. Thanks. I didn't know that.

During the balloon boy madness Sanchez pissed me off when he stated that we should all pray for the little boy. :eyes: I hoped the kid was ok too, but for a MSM figure to tell people to pray for the boy was a little over the top, imo. He could have just stated that we all hope the boy is ok & our hearts are with the family.

Once in a while, Cooper hosts a round table discussion. I've seen two of them. The first was last fall before the election. His guests were Fareed Zakaria & David Gergen. It was great! They had a very thoughtful discussion of the issues facing the country & how those problems were largely due to the arrogance & incompetence of the Bush administration. More recently he had a larger panel that discussed health care reform. They covered many aspects of it, including tort reform. What I really liked is that the guests were reasonable, well informed & polite. There was no shouting or speaking over others.

There was a time, right after Katrina, when I felt the scales had fallen from Cooper's eyes. I think he was genuinely horrified at what he witnessed in NOLA.

[No Elephants]

74. Cooper, a hard core Republican and a former Reaganite qualify as a round table?

That's like four republicans and George Steph. Oh, wait. That's the "roundtable" of This Week.

[rayofreason]

60. Wow....

...never heard about that. Thanks for the info.

[gateley]

30. And the man (forgive me, I've forgotten his name again) who

does the comments. Wife died, looks like he's had a rough life -- I like that guy.

[CrispyQ]

32. Jack Cafferty --

I forgot about Jack! I love Jack.

He used to be one of three hosts for the CNN morning show, which ran for 2-3 hours. Then he woke up to the disaster called George W Bush & started making negative comments about the Iraq war & the administration in general. Next thing you know, he was removed from the morning show & given 2-3 five minutes spots on The Situation Room.

[gateley]

51. Oh -- I never knew his history! I'd love for MSNBC to snatch

him up. Even if he makes critical remarks about Obama, I think they're more tolerant of fair assessment than CNN is/was.

That's really ugly what CNN did to him. :grr:

Ed rages on Obama and the administration plenty!

[question everything]

38. He is the only one I CANNOT stand to watch

When I am at home, this is when I switch to MSNBC or just turned off the TV.

He epitomized the decline of CNN, when it moved to iRpeort, and twitters, and viewers comments, etc. I turn to CNN, or to MSNBC to learn about the news! I don't care about people shoving their faces in front of a camera, of some CNN people pointing out what others are saying.

If I wanted to know what people are saying I would stick to message boards.

[CrispyQ]

68. I'm not fond of the twitter stuff either,

although some of their comments are more cognizant that Wolf Blitzer's. I'm stunned that CNN has Blitzer host their flagship show.

I use to have CNN on in the background when I was cooking or cleaning. When they decided to show the Rush Limbaugh rant in it's entirety, I turned them off. Now I surf by it occasionally, but I hardly ever watch it. I don't get MSNBC. I hear some of their evening shows are good.

Our media is so totally compromised.

[No Elephants]

75. MSNBC gears it's on air talent and its policies to approval polls. However, it's final authority is

the head of NBC News and NBC leans right and has for years.

MSNBC has three liberal hosts, Olberman, Shultz and Maddow, all brought on after Bush's approval ratings started tanking. Before that, their line up was Don Imus, Joe Scarborough, Tucker Carlon, Dennis Miller.

In the old days, Matthews spoke of having voted for Bush twice. However, after MSNBC starting toning down its Republicon heart, Matthews started swinging the other way, starting with heavy criticism of the Iraq War, in which even Scarborough engaged. So, basically, Matthews seems willing to go whichever way his employer wants at any given time.

[Birthmark]

7. They'd do better if...

...they'd figure out that the "C" doesn't stand for cartoon.

[bigworld]

8. If CNN would do hard news instead of fluff and gimmicks

they'd get stellar ratings. There is a segment of the population that does want hard, straight news instead of opinion. But I'm afraid that CNN will read this the wrong way and become even more fluff oriented. Ted Turner is rolling in his grave. Well, if he were dead he would be.

[goclark]

37. I get sick and tired of watching Candy and Lou Dobbs and

Rick and the girl with the marble voice in the morning.

CNN tries to be so on top of everything and it is so slanted IMO.

Anderson Cooper gets on my nerves but I like Jack C. - more Jack would be OK with me but they seem to treat him like a step child.

And Wolfie ~ can't take him at all.

I'll just look at Rachel and Keith but I've got to skip Morning Joe and the Prision ADS/Shows.

[Ganja Ninja]

10. We'll have to leave it there.

:yoiks: CNN - Nobody leaves more things there.

Seriously CNN just cover a story and stop trying not to offend FOX by pretending all points of view are equal. You'll be better off in the end. We all will be. The pointless and endless debates have become tiresome to put it mildly.

[boppers]

62. Jon saw this coming a while ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE

[Cirque du So-What]

11. Come again?

'The results demonstrate once more the apparent preference of viewers for opinion-oriented shows from the news networks in prime time.'

Lou Dobbs, Campbell Brown, Larry King & Anderson Cooper are too 'newsy' for people? Not that I watch any of them, but I know enough about these characters to say with confidence that none of their shows fall into the category of 'hard news coverage.'

Ever since their purchase by TIME Warner, CNN has tried to be all things to all people, and ended up being unsatisfactory for anyone. They allot the lion's share of opinion programming to the neocons; liberals can go drink paddy water!

I hope it's indicative of an exodus of viewers away from corporate media and toward internet-based media. Fuck 'em & feed 'em fish heads - all of 'em - MSNBC included!

[medeak]

41. DITTO!!!!! n/t

[TomCADem]

12. How Does CNN Do During News Hours?

The prime time time frame is all opinion. Plus, networks have news around prime time as well, thus CNN's plain vanilla news offering has a lot of competition during prime time. Conversely, I usually listen to CNN during the news hours, but in prime time, I am watching the networks or sports.

My take is that the sane people are being split between CNN, MSNBC, HLN and the networks, while the right wing news junkies will go to Fox, thus there is no reason to try to out-Fox Fox, but I am sure CNN will try.

###

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.

###

The fact of the matter is that even Fox News gets detroyed relative to non-mews programs in primetime:

http://www.sfgate.com/tvradio/nielsens/

[Bitwit1234]

13. CNN

That explains why they are starting to scue the news in favor of the republicans maybe they think they can get up there with Fox...By the way if you count all the other stations etc and add them up there are more viewers than Fox...so most people don't want a 24 hour republican infomerical station.

[No Elephants]

76. They've been going further and further right for years.

[qb]

14. When people wanted real news, they used to go to CNN.

When they wanted tabloid fluff they watched something like Inside Edition. Now CNN does a hybrid tabloid/news format so badly no one wants to watch it.

[Aramchek]

15. Haaa Haaaa!

[Pirate Smile]

17. I bet Joy Behar's numbers helped HLN to move ahead of CNN.

[FrenchieCat]

19. CNN sucks! Their anchors are personality challenged......

they make you want to slap them silly, with their arrogance and ugly hearts!

Plus, they ain't fooling no one with their Republican Lite Talking points.
At the end of the day, they are worse than Fox, cause at least with Fox,
you know they are totally useless......while with CNN, you figure it out
after watching for about 30 minutes.

Other than that; no difference other than there are more blondes that show up on Fox.

[LaPera]

20. MSNBC will continue to grow...Non news Fox has pretty much hit it's peak with the moron viewers.

[KamaAina]

22. One of my Facebook friends suggested calling them

"I Can't Believe It's Not Fox"! :rofl:

[FSogol]

23. Lou Dobbs sickens everyone. n/t

[TankLV]

70. The understatement of the year...

[Burma Jones]

25. Cable Shows that regularly dwarf audiences for all Cable News combined

Hannah Montana
Wrestling
Sponge Bob
Repeats of NCIS and Monk
iCarly


I think, but do not know exact figures, that the three networks have far larger audiences for their news than do the Cable News outlets

[WriteDown]

27. I've heard of everything except for iCarly.

:shrug:

[Burma Jones]

29. A big favorite of 'tweens......Disney Channel I think

[TankLV]

71. How funny - those are the programs I switch to after getting disgusted with CNN - again!!!

except for wrestling - I can't stand fakes in anything - I can't believe how many people think it's "real" wrestling and not the acting job it is...

[Robb]

28. "Last place among news networks"

...Sort of a "world's tallest dwarf" headline.

[Joanne98]

31. It's their stupid lifestyle stories!

[Spazito]

33. CNN hasn't been a "news network" since Ted Turner sold it....

they are just a Fox wannabe, imo, and when viewers want Fox-like news they go to Fox. CNN has a rabid racist on it's network, one they continue to protect and until they get rid of Dobbs and repub bootlicker Blitzer I have tuned them out and MSNBC in.

[davidwparker]

34. I heard Ted Turner was interested in running CNN again. Maybe

Time/Warner will sell it back to him.

CNN used to be good. Never watch it anymore.

[DireStrike]

39. Pick a side, we're at war!

Or at least, show yourself as having picked a side even if it isn't true, like MSNBC did.

[AllexxisF1]

40. Best Thing CNN Could Do.

Hire Thom Hartman and give him a show in Prime Time like Keith has at MSNBC.

[CRK7376]

43. I still watch CNN

and like them compared to all the rest. Just get rid of Nancy Grace and Larry King and I would be thrilled. Those two make me nuts.

[louis-t]

46. Dobbs can go, too.

[Mr. Sparkle]

45. I used to watch them a lot until recently. When they started having stupid right wingers on and

take news cues from Fox noise and Beck, that's when i decided to flick the channel for good.

[orbitalman]

47. What's the difference between Fox News and Lou Dobbs?? n/t

[w4rma]

49. I don't watch CNN. And I'll never watch anything that Rupert Murdoch owns or has a say in. (nt)

[Ian David]

50. They should call it The Caucasian News Network. n/t

[Dulcinea]

52. CNN used to be a great news source.

CNN showed news no one else did when Ted Turner was running it.

Then Time Warner bought it, & figured out good news coverage costs big bucks, & that was the end of good news coverage. They don't want to spend the money. Ireports, Twitters, & takling head shows are cheaper, even though they suck!

[MadMaddie]

53. I have been told by my Right Wing Co-workers that CNN is a

left leaning organization in the left ruled media. I shit you not....:grr:

[MellowDem]

54. I don't agree with this....

"The results demonstrate once more the apparent preference of viewers for opinion-oriented shows from the news networks in prime time. "

CNN has dove into that as much as anyone else, they just try to play all sides of the field, and as a result, get burned.

[tabasco]

56. John Stewart showed us why.

CNN = idiots pushing an agenda, not looking for the truth.

[classysassy]

57. Lynn Russell

where are you,cnn need you pronto?.

[Doctor_J]

58. Nothing in the middle of the road except dead racoons & 3rd place networks

They're too right wing for sane people, not reactionary enough for Fox zombies.

[Blue_Tires]

59. they got to streamline and go back to the roots

just keep looping and updating the hour's top headlines every 60 minutes: breaking, world, national, business, sports, entertainment

[bamacrat]

61. They're too affraid of being labeled liberal or conservative so they puss out on topics.

As Jon Stewart said "CNN: Nobody leaves more things there ." I like Rick Sanchez and hisshow is a cool concept but every show on there is via Twitter, facebook or myspace. I wrote CNN an email a few months ago and said as long as Lou dobbs is on I won't watch CNN. Now I can get MSNBC haven't watched CNN in almost a month.

[badgervan]

63. Exactly....

... no guts to ask the obvious follow-up questions, or to call a lie a lie. What drove me away from CNN, besides the gutlessness, is the condescending delivery of some of the hosts. I could close my eyes, and there was Ron Burgundy, with that fake schmaltzy delivery like chaulk on a blackboard. The first cable news channel that gets back to authentic news, versus chasing balloons and spending entire days on a missing kid or watching car chases from helicopters, that's the news chanel that will win the ratings. Trouble is, they fired all their best people, especially in the field doing the real work of news gathering, so what we see and hear now is a shell of what a real news organization should be... and once was.

[NeoConsSuck]

64. We already have one Fox

why would we need a Fox Lite?

[Dappleganger]

65. The reality in 2009 for cable news is that they ALL suck.

There, I said it.

Yeah, I watch MSNBC (except Morning Joe and Andrea Mitchell, who put me to sleep). Rachel, Keith & Co. are interesting, but not much else. Overall the quality of news reporting and real journalism is at an all-time low on the air, and has been so for some time.

Fox may claim to be the best, but if the competition isn't much that's not saying anything.

[ChicagoSuz219]

66. CNN Drops to Last Place

For starters, get rid of Lou Dobbs!! & soon, BEFORE we get into Immigration Policy.
And, change cnn.com back to it's original format. I stumbled upon this site because the new one is sooooo annoying & I'm sick of the snarky tabloid headlines on HuffPost! If it ain't broke, don't fix it! That goes for facebook, too! Doesn't anyone remember New Coke? LOL

[xc8mip]

67. What's the difference?

between first and last? All channels have the same contents

[Turborama]

72. Does anyone know where to find the ratings for international news stations?

I know that Al Jazeera English is http://iwantaje.com/aje/">broadcast to more than 140 million households in more than 100 countries but I can't seem to find any figures for CNN International, BBC World and Faux.

[mr_liberal]

77. CNNs problem is that its a pale imitation

of MSNBC.

It slants liberal, but its sort of mushy liberal without the conviction, and tries to pass itself off as unbiased. People know though that it is biased, just not as much as msnbc or Fox.

So it doesn't get conservative viewers because its liberal, but it doesn't get many liberal viewers either because it has no conviction.

Just being straight, unslanted news wouldnt work either. Thats boring. There is a niche for a network that would attack both parties equally though. That would be a cable news network with an independent or libertarian slant. Thats the audience thats not being served today.