Former President Trump, who was under siege by the mainstream media during his term of office, predicted that after he left office, “fake news media” such as CNN would dry up in ratings, and he was right. After Trump left office, CNN’s ratings dropped 44%, and MSNBC, the network television owned by NBC, also dropped 20%.
CNN has been attacking and badmouthing Trump for the past four years, while being perceived as taking a clear stance in the U.S. presidential election, fiercely blacking out Trump, who is seeking re-election, and treating Democratic candidate Joe Biden well, and even being criticized for becoming the official media of the Democratic Party; last September, Trump also criticized MSNBC for having 100% negative coverage of him and losing all credibility as a result.
In 2018, Trump tweeted, “The fake news media is going crazy! In many ways, they have completely lost their minds. After witnessing the damage they have done to so many innocent and decent people. I am happy to see that in 7 years, when I am not in office, their ratings will dry up and they will be gone!”
Although Trump did not expect to lose his re-election, downbeat CNN ratings is right. According to Variety, in the first week of the Biden Administration, the AT&T-owned news channel’s recent influx of viewers in its Jan. 25-29 prime Time slot has dropped sharply from its highs in previous weeks.
Variety’s analysis of ratings data for two key metrics – the target news demographic of 25-54 year olds and total viewers tuning in – showed that CNN’s ratings for all three hours of primetime dropped wildly by about 44 percent in the last week of January compared to the previous week; MSNBC also dropped 20 percent in the first week after Trump left office
Meanwhile, Fox News, which was criticized by many Trump fans for its “backbone” after the election, saw its ratings plunge for several weeks before Biden took office, and slightly after Trump left office.
The conservative website Gateway Pundit reads that while it is too early to draw conclusions about the long-term direction of news ratings after just one week, the decline can be interpreted as an indicator of what many industry observers expected. With Biden in the White House, media outlets that have spent the last four years bashing Trump have lost the primary appeal that energized their viewership, making it difficult to maintain high ratings levels.
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