CNN’s ratings woes continue, with Anderson Cooper’s show in the doldrums, reports the Los Angeles Times’ Company Town blog.
Anderson Cooper’s show averaged just 575,000 viewers for July, representing a 56% decline from the same period a year earlier. it’s also the second least-watched month ever for Cooper, who reported from hot spots such as the BP oil spill and Haiti, the story says.
John King, meanwhile, has shed 42% of the viewers that Lou Dobbs drew last July, placing CNN fourth in the hour.
Still, CNN’s rivals also saw audience declines in July, the story points out: "Fox News is still on way out on top, but its prime-time average is down 11% in viewers compared to the same month a year ago while MSNBC was off 9%. CNN’s sister channel HLN saw 20% of its audience disappear."
The real reason for the decline in viewers for CNN is the direction it’s taken in the last few years. For the longest time, CNN was dedicated to excellent reporting of real news, and now it seems to be more of a tabloid than anything else.
Two factors. One is the variability of the news channels. When there is big news that people are interested in and hasn’t been oversaturated then networks are all up. The other is CNN’s own problem. It has bad lead-ins to the evening that have destroyed King and Cooper. Those programs need a strong lead-in to start the evening and they don’t have it. Because of that, King is not getting the level of guests he did in the past and his ratings are down and that drags down Cooper.
John King is still way better than Lou Dodds ever was. Anderson Cooper is awlays interesting. Could it be summer and people are out enjoying it.