CNN Ratings Down by 1 Million Viewers Since Trump Left Office

No wonder CNN’s Brian Stelter went on live national TV without his pants on.

He was trying to help CNN’s sinking ratings!

Unfortunately, Stelter didn’t realize that going on TV without pants would likely SCARE viewers away!

We definitely won’t be tuning in any time soon!

In fact, Stelter’s show has lost over 1 million viewers since President Trump has left office.

At WeLoveTrump, we miss the 45th president.

Does the fake news mainstream media miss Donald Trump yet?

They might not publicly admit it, but we are sure that they do!

CNN 'reporter' Brian Stelter reached out to Newsmax for a story about TV ratings: https://t.co/ZZoCwsDAsW

— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) March 11, 2021

ICYMI ==> OUCH! Newsmax response to CNN’s Brian Stelter seeking comment about declining ratings is *chef’s kiss* https://t.co/P8MoFaBw5t

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) March 12, 2021

It turns out that CNN is in denial about their massive ratings drop.

How do we know?

Because instead of acknowledging their terrible ratings, CNN focused on…. Newsmax.

That’s right… CNN addressed how bad their ratings are by talking about Newsmax’s ratings.

To be clear, Newsmax is primarily an online platform, though it has recently gained steam on traditional television.

According to Newsmax itself:

Last night, CNN’s Brian Stelter contacted us about “Newsmax’s ratings declines for my CNN newsletter.”

Stelter contacted Newsmax at 9 p.m. on Wednesday night and said he would give us just one hour to respond, meaning a 10 p.m. deadline.

Without Newsmax’s response, CNN’s Stelter email newsletter, headlined “Newsmax’s rise and fall,” noted that “Newsmax TV gained a lot of attention last fall when disaffected Fox News fans flocked to the channel en masse. … Newsmax’s Nielsen ratings are way off the post-election highs that I wrote about three and four months ago.”

Stelter chalked up his “Newsmax is falling” story to his theory that “Newsmax is no longer getting a pro-Trump Big Lie ratings boost. Biden is a comparatively tame story.”

As it turns out, Biden is also a very tame story for CNN as well, which has seen its own ratings collapse in recent weeks.

Early Wednesday morning Newsmax sent Stelter the following response: “Only CNN would do a story on Newsmax’s drop in ratings when its own Nielsen total day impressions fell by 45% last week compared to the week after the election, and Brian Stelter’s own ‘Reliable Sources’ show fell by 44% over the same period with, more recently, his show having lost nearly 1 million viewers since January of this year.”

CNN’s Stelter was contacted to comment on his network’s ratings decline, but did not offer comment.

So, what’s the real story for the ratings spin from CNN?

CNN and Stelter have been advocates of “deplatforming” the Newsmax channel, in a clear censorship effort to reduce competition, especially as their own ratings have fallen off a cliff.

Here’s what the current Nielsen ratings really do show:

• Newsmax remains the #4 cable news channel in the United States.
• Newsmax remains a top 25 cable network for Total Day.
• Newsmax growth has accelerated over the past three quarters, up 24% in P2+ impression and up 23% in A35-64 viewers, from fourth quarter 2020 to first quarter 2021.
• Newsmax has seen double-digit P2+ ratings growth from fourth quarter 2020 to first quarter 2021, led by “Spicer & Co.” (+39%), “Greg Kelly Reports” and “American Agenda” (+35%), “Rob Schmitt Tonight” (+31%), and “Stinchfield” (+24%).
• Over the past few months, Newsmax has had a sudden rise, catapulting the independent network as a top cable news player.

This fact has panicked not only CNN but Fox News, which has made dramatic changes in its lineup to counter Newsmax.

Of course, CNN likely does not want to admit that as the landscape returns to “normal,” this likely means that they will lose the ratings race to Fox News.

Perhaps MSNBC as well.

And if Newsmax’s take off continues, one day CNN could lose to them as well!

Ratings envy much? https://t.co/Pn76PseICe

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) March 6, 2021

https://twitter.com/Mikefication/status/1370122733774848005

It’s funny that CNN has chosen to focus on Newsmax.

Why?

Because they are unintentionally giving Newsmax free publicity, which in turn would likely increase their ratings!

This means that the apparent attempt to bash Newsmax could backfire… bigly.

Here’s the hit piece that Stelter published on the CNN website:

Newsmax TV gained a lot of attention last fall when disaffected Fox News fans flocked to the channel en masse. For the first time in Fox’s 24-year history, it had real and measurable 24/7 competition from the right. And that’s still true — but Newsmax’s Nielsen ratings are way off their post-election highs.

By one measure, comparing Newsmax’s peak week in mid-November to a low point at the end of February, Newsmax’s audience has lost “more than half its audience,” Marisa Sarnoff wrote for Mediaite last week.

A Newsmax representative said those figures were misleading and noted that all cable news viewership has declined since the election. That’s true: News ratings rise and fall like tides.

But what Newsmax experienced was more like a flash flood, followed by a dry spell.

As Politico media critic Jack Shafer recently commented on Twitter, this story is “not just the decline of Newsmax but its wild spike and subsequent decline.”

In the immediate aftermath of the election, Newsmax’s ratings surged, in some cases by a factor of ten. This was, at least in part, a Big Lie ratings boost — supporters of President Trump raged against Fox for perceived sins like calling the state of Arizona for Joe Biden, and those supporters looked for alternative media sources.

At some points in November Newsmax averaged about one-fourth of Fox’s total audience, which definitely made a dent in Fox and sparked more than a little bit of concern inside the Rupert Murdoch-controlled network.

Lately, however, Newsmax’s audience has been about one-eighth the size of Fox’s on good days, and even smaller than that on bad days. On Tuesday, for example, Newsmax netted 175,000 viewers at any given time, versus Fox’s 1.49 million. On Wednesday, more of the same: Newsmax averaged 169,000 and Fox averaged 1.47 million.

Greg Kelly’s far-right 7 p.m. broadcast continues to be Newsmax’s biggest hit, but his ratings have fallen off considerably, just like the rest of the channel. There were days right after the election when Kelly topped one million viewers. Now he is usually under the half-million mark. In the 25- to 54-year-old demographic that cable news networks covet, Kelly is no longer nipping at Fox’s heels. In hindsight, that day Kelly out-rated Fox’s 7 p.m. hour in the 25-54 demo was a fluke.

Some of the reasons for this reversal of fortune are obvious: Trump is no longer making news on a minute-by-minute basis. And he is no longer tweeting or otherwise touting Newsmax’s brand. Plus, President Biden is a comparatively tame story. And some Fox fans have “come home” to Fox, as a network executive predicted in November that they would.

To be sure, Fox still faces a wide world of competitors that wouldn’t have merited any attention a year ago. With Newsmax, One America News, and a half dozen right-wing streaming players in the mix, there is an entire ecosystem trying to peel viewers away from Murdoch’s media empire. This will continue to put pressure on Fox to satiate the audience with opinion and outrage content, not meat and potatoes news.

Case in point: The Sunday afternoon when Trump spoke at CPAC. Newsmax averaged about 1.57 million viewers during the speech, about 15 times higher than usual. Fox averaged 5.74 million viewers during the speech.

But those Trump-inflated moments don’t happen very often. And Newsmax’s declines demonstrate that the channel hasn’t been able to retain all of the viewers that went searching for a Fox alternative last fall.

Newsmax’s right-wing rivals have noticed the air coming out of the balloon. Bill O’Reilly, for one, discussed the Mediaite article on his radio show. A Twitter account belonging to his show noted that “the network’s viewership exploded after the election but now the numbers are going down.”

In response to this reporting, the same Newsmax staffer who usually sends out the company’s press releases wrote to me and said Newsmax was doing a story involving “CNN’s ratings collapse.”

Separately, the channel’s head of communications and marketing issued a statement assailing the ratings for “Reliable Sources” and CNN as a whole.

So what do you think?

Is CNN focusing on Newsmax to divert attention away from its own lackluster ratings?

Or is this a legitimate news story that needs to be talked about.

To us, we think that this attempt to bash Newsmax will backfire.

It really does seem like an unintentional bout of free publicity that will only continue to help right-leaning and truth-telling news to gain a foothold in the marketplace.

Are you watching Newsmax?

Let us know where you get your news in the comments section below!