Share
Commentary

Americans Are Brutally Paying Back CNN & MSNBC for 2 Years of Lies About Trump

Share

For CNN, April really was the cruelest month — and it wasn’t all that great for MSNBC, either.

The two left-leaning networks, after spending two years following every twist and turn of the “Russia collusion” probe with breathless tenacity, ran straight into the brick wall of reality with the close of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation at the end of March.

And the payback from the American viewing public was brutal.

With CNN’s rating dropping a full 26 percent in April 2019 compared to the same month in 2018, and MSNBC’s down 14 percent in the same time period, it should be clear how little the two networks have gotten back on their investment in #Resistance.

Meanwhile, Fox News, the network most closely identified with the Trump administration, maintained its ratings overall for the month, according to The Hill, and dominated its two competitors.

Trending:
KJP Panics, Hangs Up in Middle of Interview When Reporter Shows He Isn't a Democratic Party Propagandist

For the month, Fox had an average of 2.4 million prime time viewers — the same as April 2018, the Hill reported.

With MSNBC drawing an average of 1.6 million viewers in prime time and CNN only 767,000, Fox News was essentially beating the two liberal networks’ efforts combined.

So while the likes of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and CNN’s Chris Cuomo tried to keep up their unending barrage against the Trump White House — even after the Mueller report showed up the Russian collusion tale for the lie that it is — Fox News remained dominant.

In terms of individual shows on cable, Fox had four of the top five, according to The Hill:

Do you think CNN and MSNBC deserved the drop in ratings?

Sean Hannity’s “Hannity” was No. 1 with an average of 3.086 million viewers, followed by “Tucker Carlson Tonight” at No. 2 with 2.8 million viewers. No. 4 was Laura Ingraham’s “The Ingraham Angle” with 2.45 million viewers and No. 5 (appropriately enough) was “The Five,” with 2.4 million.

The lone liberal show in in the top tier was Maddow’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” which somehow still managed to average 2.6 million viewers, according to The Hill.

It’s probably not a coincidence that about the same time the news about CNN’s ratings was going around, the network’s own poll showed President Donald Trump’s approval rating higher than at any point in his presidency.

And social media users were merciless in summing up the liberal media’s woes.

Related:
Watch: CNN Panel Mocks Trump for Selling Bibles with Lee Greenwood

Even self-identifed Democrats can see what’s happening.

Granted, the curious mashup of what appears to be the names of adult film star Stormy Daniels and currently-under-indictment anti-Trump attorney Michael Avenatti dilutes the strength a little bit, but that last tweet still makes a point.

When even viewers who are politically sympathetic can see how bad CNN and the rest are, it means it’s painfully, brutally obvious to the rest of the country.

And eventually that’s going to hit where it really hurts — in the ad revenues.

As John Sexton noted at Hot Air, CNN sycophant Brian Stelter told broadcast legend Ted Koppel last year that CNN could take a drop of 40 percent in its ratings and it wouldn’t bother the network.

That hypothetical situation is closer to reality with CNN’s ratings dropping 26 percent in a month. In the television business, dropping ratings almost certainly means dropping ad revenues, and dropping revenues are bad for any business that has bills to pay — like, say, Anderson Cooper’s reputed $12 million salary.

Will the post-Mueller ratings shake up CNN’s politics? It’s impossible to say now, especially with an election year looming.

But it should give the corporate suits something to think about.

It doesn’t take a political scientist or a television marketing genius to realize that CNN and MSNBC are running out of gas.

Two years of lies, constantly promising the end of the Trump presidency was just around the corner, have come to an end.

And whatever bleating remains from Jerrold Nadler & Co. in the Democratic House of Representatives, the effort to overturn the results of the 2016 election by a baseless smear campaign of “Russian collusion” is a zombie movement — lacking a real animating force, but still stumbling forward on its own faltering momentum.

That can’t last forever, and the April numbers from CNN and MSNBC prove it.

“Cruel” barely covers it.

Truth and Accuracy

Submit a Correction →



We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

Tags:
, , , , ,
Share
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American




Conversation