According to Fox News, CNN‘s prime-time viewership, the 8 PM-11 PM timeslot, dropped by 36% after Biden’s inauguration.
This ananlysis comes from Fox News‘ research from Nielsen data.
CNN also showed losses in the 24-54 age range by as much as 50%. From the night of the 2020 election until Inauguration Day, they had 2.5 million viewers on average. After Inauguration Day, they tanked to 1.6 million viewers.
Lachlan Murdoch, Fox Corp‘s CEO, spoke at a Media and Telecom Conference on March 5, he said, “Going forward, if history is any lesson, the main beneficiary of the Trump administration, from a ratings points of view, was MSNBC.”
He continued, “MSNBC had the biggest lift, relative to where it was before to its peers, throughout the Trump administration. We think that that’s because they’re the loyal opposition. They called out the president when he needed to be called out.”
In the same conference, WarnerMedia‘s (CNN‘s parent company) CEO, Jason Kilar, said, “It turns out the pandemic is a pretty big part of the news cycle and that’s not going away any time soon.”
Kilar continued taunting their success with covering COVID. He said, “If you take a look at the ratings and the performance, it’s going well. I think it’s going well because A. the team at CNN is doing a fantastic job and B. it turns out the pandemic and the way that we can inform and help contextualize the business is really good for ratings.”