Mediaite has released complete (6 A.M. to midnight) ratings for the cable news channels last Monday (something that normally one must pay to see), and they tell a story that ought to hearten conservatives.  We are used to reading that Fox News outdraws each of the two progressive channels, CNN and MSNBC, and that Fox often even exceeds their combined audience.  But on Monday, at least, during Tucker Carlson’s and Greg Gutfeld’s shows, Fox’s audience was more than twice the combined audience of the two lefty cable news channels.

Add in the audience for Newsmax and Newsnation, and the story is even grimmer for the two lefty outlets.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that at 9 A.M. (Eastern), Newsmax pulls in 28% of the audience of CNN and 20% of the MSNBC viewership.  At noon, Newsmax has 26% of CNN’s total and almost 36% of MSNBC’s audience for Andrea Mitchell’s program.  At 8 P.M., Eric Bolling of Newsmax got 44% of the audience of Anderson Cooper on CNN.  That’s impressive for an upstart network commonly ignored by the mainstream media when it is not being denounced as extremist.

Take some time to peruse the complete ratings here.

For the “key demo” — the 25- to 54-year-old audience that advertisers covet — the story is even grimmer for CNN.  At 6 A.M., CNN can draw only 30,000 viewers in the key demo.  In prime time, 8 and 9 P.M. hours, the hapless Anderson Cooper draws only 50 and 55 thousand key demo viewers, respectively.

With ratings this pathetic, CNN’s new owners, Warner Brothers Discovery, may be regretting their purchase.  Their new president of CNN, Chris Licht, has so far presided over further decline.  It is no surprise, then, that CNN will be abandoning its landmark CNN headquarters, formerly a tourist attraction, to save money, and is even contemplating  a comedian to rescue its prime-time lineup.  Unless Mr. Licht gets a clue and shuns progressives for that role, it will be fruitless.

Of course, it can be argued that Monday Night Football hoovered up viewers, but why would CNN and MSNBC be affected more than Fox?

I suspect that part of the reason viewers have abandoned the prog broadcasters is the sense of discouragement leftists feel now, thanks to the multiplying disasters inflicted on the nation by the Biden administration.  Who wants to watch an unending stream of bad and outright embarrassing news for your team?

It can also be argued that the total viewership of cable news is comparatively small, in the single-digit millions.  But the people who do devote themselves to these channels are often the thought leaders on politics in their spheres of personal association, so their behavior has a multiplier effect.

Many have noticed that CNN has been rather hard on President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.  Its disastrous ratings may have something to do with this.  But until Chris Licht recruits new talent to his lineup and hands walking papers to Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon, for starters, it is unlikely to draw many new eyeballs.

Hat tip: Hot Air

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