There is an old chestnut saying that you can make statistics say anything. An example of this is displayed in a scene from a mostly overlooked Tom Selleck sports movie, “Mr. Baseball.” He is in the twilight of his career and the coaching staff informs him he is being replaced by an upcoming rookie. Selleck’s character tries to fight for his roster spot, but the coaches were unimpressed with his desperate argument – “I led this club in 9th-inning doubles in the month of August! “ 

That dialogue was called to mind when I came across a post from Abby Phillip making an attempt to boast about the ratings for her program. Now I am not singling out the hostess of “News Night With Abby Phillip” for a direct reason, it is just that in covering the media as I do there is a familiarity with the ratings of the cable news nets, so seeing her bragging about figures I know to be dismal grabbed my attention.

"NewsNight with Abby Phillip continues to be a standout performer for CNN, ranking as the network’s most watched program among P25-54 for the third consecutive month. Further, NewsNight grew by impressive, double-digit margins year-over-year among both demos."…

— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) April 30, 2025

Now, some of the initial reaction to this might be along the lines of, “Well, this is all due to drawing eyes with the appearance of Scott Jennings on her panels,” but this is not the case. We all are mostly aware of his scalpel-like verbal cuts on Leftists through social media clips, not from tuning in on a nightly basis. Meanwhile, when was the last time you saw clips from Erin Burnett or Anderson Cooper? Few people watch them, and I can say this by being in possession of the actual ratings. 

What Phillip is resorting to is a practice seen in Hollywood in the pre-pandemic days. If a film was released and underperformed at the box office, the studio would desperately try to spin the results to generate interest. If they released a talking animal cartoon that was beaten out by the competition, for example, the Monday advertising might come out to declare, “It’s the most popular animated family film in America!” This would then lead to them flashing a large #1 on screen, all while the film landed in the #4 position for the weekend.

There is a scatalogical idiom for this practice: “Attempting to polish a turd.” (Okay, fine – “Lipstick on a pig”, for the squeamish ones out there.) Ms. Phillip is certainly bringing out her buffer to brag about her numbers.

For starters, you see she is resorting to highlighting the “P25-54” numbers, which is the prime advertising demographic, not her true audience size. But moreover, she is only spotlighting that return against the other shows on her network. This is like bragging about having the flashiest paint job on your lifeboat as the ship is sinking below the waterline. Abby does not want to face reality.

Her 10 p.m. ET timeslot frequently struggles to even reach 500,000 viewers, getting trounced in the ratings by “Gutfeld!” by a clip of nearly 7-1. She even loses out to the unwatchable MSNBC gasbag Lawrence O’Donnell, who has roughly three times her audience. Perhaps the biggest indicator of their problems is that on many days from the 5 p.m. hour onward, every show loses audience size from the lead-in program. 

Cable News Ratings Fri Mar 21

Average Viewers & Share
Total
1⃣@FoxNews 2,590,500
2⃣@MSNBC 1,108,250
3⃣@CNN 449,875

Demo
1⃣Fox News 283,500
2⃣MSNBC 105,625
3⃣CNN 75,375 pic.twitter.com/OtRX29qbuA

— RoadMN (@RoadMN) March 25, 2025

And this cannot be dismissed as a general demise of cable news audiences. In recent weeks, Fox News has hit primetime numbers that actually see them beating some of the broadcast networks. That used to be unthinkable. Greg Gutfeld has been beating the other late-night talk shows for about a solid year now. Bret Baier’s 6 p.m. straight news report has climbed into direct competition with the Big-3 nightly news broadcasts.

Also of note, @SpecialReport with @BretBaier averaged over 3 million viewers per night in April, not only crushing his competition on cable but is also beating CBS, NBC and ABC in various markets around the country. pic.twitter.com/O0ibqrMU4J

— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) April 29, 2025

Meanwhile CNN is fading faster than a North Korean sweater on its second washing. While I do understand the desire to find something - anything - to brag about, Ms. Phillip is basically asking for this kind of analysis when she comes out to tout about her audience. It is essentially a reflection of the way they operate at “The Defamation Network”: Do not present the whole truth, just the details that fit their agenda.

Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie.  

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