On Friday night, CNN held a town hall on the war in Iran featuring State of the Union co-host Dana Bash in lieu of The Source with Kaitlan Collins and, while CNN and ratings do not necessary go together, it was a particular embarrassment with a paltry 596,000 total viewers, well behind Discovery’s Gold Rush: Mine Rescue with Freddy and Juan, HGTV’s House Hunters and My Lottery Dream Home, a special episode of TruTV’s Impractical Jokers on TBS, and Reelz’s On Patrol: Live.
Nielsen Media Research numbers also showed that, in the coveted 25-43 demo, CNN pulled in only 105,000 viewers, which was well behind all of these programs (albeit by small margins).
CNN also live coverage of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament on fellow Warner Bros. Discovery channels TBS, TNT, and TruTV, but it’s these other programs that showcase how much the liberal elite network’s reach has shrunk.
A reincarnated version of A&E’s Live PD (which was cancelled by the woke mob in 2020), Reelz’s On Patrol: Live is only available in half the number of homes CNN has at its disposal (40 million vs. 80 million), but it was still able to tie CNN in the demo but edge past them in total viewers at 603,000.
For HGTV shows, My Lottery Dream Home aired directly opposite the CNN town hall at 9:00 p.m Eastern, but trounced CNN with 953,000 total viewers and 136,000 viewers. House Hunters didn’t air until 10:30 p.m. Eastern, but still pulled 618,000 total sets of eyeballs and 136,000 in the demo.
As for Gold Rush: Mine Rescue, that aired in full against CNN’s hour-long town hall and came away with a huge win at 904,000 total viewers and a smaller victory among viewers aged 25-54 (127,000).
Remarkably, the Impractical Jokers special had a huge lead-in as it aired on TBS following the last Friday night March Madness game, but it nonetheless began at 12:54 a.m. Eastern and still roundly defeated CNN from nearly four hours prior as it pulled down 776,000 total viewers and a whopping 456,000 viewers in the 25-54 group.
Again, CNN’s town hall gimmick has become a go-to for the liberal network and one could at least say they have the format down, but perhaps don’t try to put something together on a Friday night opposite sports and hit reality shows.
If CNN keeps this up with poor programming choices, they’ll end up with cartoonishly bad numbers like their gone-but-not-forgotten shows we’d love to mock here at NewsBusters, Democracy in Peril, New Day, and Reliable Sources (such as here, here, and here).
