CNN Bleeds 45% of Audience in Just Five Weeks

The post-Trump era has not been kind to cable news giant CNN, losing 45% of its audience now that the network can no longer focus its coverage on the previous administration.

In another unsurprising twist, CNN isn’t the only media company suffering since Trump left office.

From the Washington Post:

Barely two months into the post-Trump era, news outlets are indeed losing much of the audience and readership they gained during his chaotic presidency. In other words, journalism’s Trump bump may be giving way to a slump.

After a record-setting January, traffic to the nation’s most popular mainstream news sites, including The Washington Post, plummeted in February, according to the audience tracking firm ComScore. The top sites were also generally doing worse than in February of last year, when the pandemic became a major international news story…

The most deeply affected network is CNN. After surpassing rivals Fox News and MSNBC in January, the network has lost 45 percent of its prime-time audience in the past five weeks, according to Nielsen Media Research. MSNBC’s audience has dropped 26 percent in the same period. Fox News — the most Trump-friendly of the three networks in its prime-time opinion shows — has essentially regained its leading position by standing still.

Trump himself famously predicted that the mainstream media would suffer if he didn’t occupy the Oval Office, predicting as much all the way back in 2017. “Newspapers, television, all forms of media will tank if I’m not there,” Trump said then, ““because without me, their ratings are going down the tubes.”

During Trump’s four years in office anti-Trump viewers tuned in to major news stations at record numbers for what became dependably negative coverage of his administration. According to one study, 92% of the coverage of Trump at major news outlets was negative.

The lack of enthusiasm for his presidency was not lost on Trump, who consistently slammed most mainstream networks as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people” during his time in office.

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