CNN's Latest Democratic Town Hall Hits Ratings Rock Bottom
Take Democratic presidential candidates New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and mix them with the CNN town hall format, and what do you get?
A ratings disaster.
Early Nielsen Media Research figures from the two-hour Sunday night event estimated its audience at 402,000 total viewers, with only 82,000 in the coveted 25-54 age range, according to The Hill.
The event was also the lowest-rated town hall CNN produced this year, and was down 25 percent overall and 38 percent in the 25-54 age range from its 2019 average for the time slot.
CNN lost the time slot to Fox News, with an average of 873,000 total viewers, and MSNBC, which was second with 664,000 viewers.
For de Blasio, the numbers were even worse, according to the New York Post.
The outlet reported de Blasio’s share of the program produced only 376,000 viewers, while Bullock’s yielded 429,000 viewers.
However, deBlasio was upbeat on Monday about his showing.
“I felt really good about it, a televised town hall, televised nationally a whole hour is a very powerful vehicle for getting a message out,” de Blasio said, according to Spectrum News.
“So this was an important moment for my campaign to get a chance to talk to the American people and I don’t know the exact number, but it was a substantial audience for sure.”
The mayor’s assessment of his campaign is at odds with others who think he has little choice but to end his presidential bid as other low-polling candidates such as former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee have done.
“Exposure is not his problem,” Douglas Muzzio, a public affairs professor at Baruch College, told The New York Times. “You can turn people off with exposure as well as turn them on. I don’t know if he’s turning people off, but he’s not turning them on.”
Bullock and deBlasio each have an average of 0.7 percent support nationwide, according to RealClearPolitics. As of Tuesday, neither had the polling or donor numbers to qualify for the third Democratic presidential debate next month.
Bullock said during the town hall that despite calls for him to end his campaign and run as a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2020, he has no plans to do so, CNN reported.
“Is your campaign not dead yet?” @jheil asks @BilldeBlasio on @Morning_Joe. BDB says he might get into the October debate, but debates aren’t moving the polls anyway. Says he’s going to keep doing nat’l media appearances like CNN town hall.
— Sally Goldenberg (@SallyGold) August 27, 2019
Meanwhile, de Blasio said that in the social media era, it’s never over while there is a tweet to post.
“Anything can happen because we’re in the age of social media,” he said last week, according to the New York Daily News.
“I’m not sure I would have given you the same answer 20 years ago,” he said.
“But today, where people go from 100 percent unknown to widely known in the course of days, we have to understand social media has changed this entirely.”
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