CNN’s ratings woes continue, even with a whole new look and a different boss at the helm.
Since officially taking over the network in early May, Chris Licht has already implemented sweeping changes at CNN in an effort to make it less politically divisive and more neutral in tone.
After a tumultuous few months that saw the chaotic ouster of top-rated anchor Chris Cuomo and longtime boss Jeff Zucker, along with the immediate shutdown of the highly touted and hugely expensive streaming service, Licht got down to business. And from the start, he promised that things would be very different at the cable news pioneer.
Speaking to potential advertisers in mid-May, Licht promised that CNN would “try to go in a different way” at a time “when extremes dominate cable news.” He has since been reported to be evaluating CNN personalities who could be perceived as too biased, specifically anchors and commentators who are often seen as having a liberal bias.
He also issued a series of new guidelines to guide CNN’s new direction, including urging the network’s broadcasts to reduce their use of “Breaking News” banners, keeping the schedules for news that is actually breaking. Licht also implored producers to stop calling former President Donald Trump’s false election claims “The Big Lie,” telling them to instead use terms like “Trump’s election lie” or “election lies” to avoid appearing bias.
Still, while media critics and right-wing pundits have speculated that the move to the middle could potentially boost CNN’s ratings among more moderate and conservative viewers, the network has yet to see such results in the short term.
In fact, the ratings have only continued to drop since the start of the Licht era.
“This premise is unfair and inaccurate. The only “broad change” in programming over the last 60 days was the directive to be more selective in the use of the breaking news banner. It would be absurd for anyone to expect this move alone to have an impact on the ratings,” a CNN spokesperson told The Daily Beast after this article was published.
For the month of June, and even though the House committee on Jan. 6 held several blockbuster hearings that should have been right at the channel’s helm, CNN actually lost viewership from the previous month. Worse, the network had already seen a decline in the previous two months.
CNN’s primetime series drew just 654,000 total viewers and 148,000 in the key advertising demographic of viewers ages 25-54 — down 1% in both categories from May. And in total daily viewership, CNN’s total audience fell to 487,000, while it drew 104,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo, down 3 percent and 2 percent, respectively.
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And during the week of June 13-19, which focused on committee hearings, the network averaged just 480,000 viewers overall, down 13% from May averages and the channel’s worst week since November 2015.
June 2022 was CNN’s lowest-rated month in total daily viewership since July 2015.
By comparison, MSNBC saw big gains from the previous month as viewers appeared to flock to the channel not only to watch the Jan. 6 hearings, but also to get analysis of the revelations.
In addition to the fact that no network averaged more viewers for the hearings than MSNBC’s audience of 3 million, it finished second in all of basic cable in total daily viewers with 767,000 viewers, up 21 percent from May. MSNBC also scored second in the total prime-time audience with 1.28 million, a 26 percent increase from the previous month. And while the older skewed channel’s demo audience was lower than CNN’s, MSNBC still enjoyed double-digit gains in both primetime (30 percent) and all-day (23 percent).
Meanwhile, in May, CNN was down 5 percent in total primetime viewers (660,000) and 11 percent in the 25-54 demographic (150,000) from April. It posted bigger losses for the total daytime audience, suffering a 20 percent drop in the demo (106,000) and a 14 percent drop in total viewers (500,000). In both May and June, CNN ranked just 12th on basic cable in prime time.
Meanwhile, the freefall in CNN’s audience over the past two months is all the more dramatic given that in April the network already saw a big drop from a March that featured daily breaking news about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
The picture also looks pretty bleak for CNN as it moves into the second quarter of this year.
While both MSNBC and conservative cable giant Fox News reported modest viewership declines compared to the first quarter of 2022, CNN saw double-digit declines across the board. And while Fox has grown its audience since the second quarter of 2021, when it first experienced a recovery from its post-election decline, CNN saw significant losses compared to last year. (MSNBC, to be fair, also shrank significantly in all categories from Q2 2021 numbers.)
Suffice it to say, the continued erosion of CNN’s linear audience is almost certainly weighing on Licht’s mind. But he may have a solution.
Bloomberg reported earlier this month that Licht was exploring ways for the network to make money that aren’t so dependent on its Nielsen ratings. One potential plan would be to create separate news segments available for sponsorship by advertisers.
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