Too bad, so sad, bye bye CNN.
During the first political primary of the 2024 presidential election, once again starring Donald Trump, CNN only barely cracked 700,000 total average prime-time viewers (707,000 to be precise).
If my math is correct, during CNNLOL’s specific Iowa caucus coverage between 8:00 and 11:00 p.m. EST, the network averaged only 689,000 viewers.
MSNBC didn’t do all that much better, averaging a total of 1.179 million primetime viewers.
Fox News earned 2.886 million, beating both combined by almost exactly a million viewers.
Those demo numbers, which decide advertising rates, are brutally low. No one will ever confuse me with a Fox News fan, but I can remember all that glee 10 or 15 years ago when the Smart Set told us MSNBC and CNN would be dominant by now after Fox’s viewers died of old age. Fox still attracts more young viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined.
As you can see in the chart, throughout the full day of the Iowa caucuses, when you would think Americans by the millions would tune in for the latest blow-dried CNN analysis, CNN averaged only 520,000 viewers. MSNBC topped out at 830,000. Fox News attracted 1.735 million.
All three networks are down compared to the total prime-time viewers for the 2020 Iowa caucuses. Fox News is down 34 percent (4.4 million 2020 viewers), MSNBC is down 53 percent (2.5 million in 2020), and CNN is down 61 percent (1.8 million in 2020).