CNN Takes Huge Hit After Trump Town Hall as New Ratings Show How Far They've Fallen

Fox has certainly taken a hit in the wake of the “parting of the ways” with Tucker Carlson, as the numbers for this past Friday show.

The numbers for the slot where his show Fox News Tonight at 8 p.m. have taken a nosedive in the critical 25-54 demographic.

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Of the top 16 Fox shows, Fox News Tonight is coming in 13th out of 16, with 136,000 viewers. Then on top of that, the two follow-up shows in prime time, “Hannity” and “The Ingraham Angle” also didn’t do well, coming in at 35th and 36th respectively, with 96,000 for Hannity and 95,000 for Ingraham. That’s an “oof” if there ever was one. Now, without Tucker’s lead-in, they appear to be taking a real hit.

However, the thing that is still holding Fox up is that the other networks continue to be awful.

Now CNN seems to also be taking a hit in the wake of their Trump town hall.

As we reported, the town hall itself had some great ratings for CNN (likely because it was picking up people who don’t generally watch CNN, including a lot of folks on the right).

The audience was double that of Fox and MSNBC in the same hour, and makes a mockery of the 473,000 average CNN pulled in in March this year.

In the key demographic of 25-54, the ratings increased to 781,000 – five times the average.

That was the Trump effect.

Trump also dominated, making CNN look silly and petty for constantly interrupting him and pushing their narrative rather than simply letting the audience members ask questions, the way that town halls are usually conducted.

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On top of that, their regular Trump-hating audience members were “traumatized” that the network had Trump on, so Anderson Cooper had to be detailed to justify the network’s action to the angry folks. It was pretty funny as he talked to them like they were children and confirmed the bias against Trump on the network.

They also had to deal with internal problems, with CEO Chris Licht reportedly calling their media reporter Oliver D’Arcy on the carpet over what he said in his “Reliable Sources” newsletter about the town hall. Licht supposedly said D’Arcy was overly “emotional” and needed to stick to the facts. As we reported earlier, there are now reports that D’Arcy might be the next guy out the door at the network.

But now it looks like CNN may be taking a hit in their ratings, if you look at their viewer numbers for May 12. How bad is it? They fell behind Newsmax in total viewer numbers.

Newsmax was celebrating and noting they beat them across all three hours. Newsmax has picked up a lot of Fox defectors in the wake of what they did to Tucker Carlson.

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At 8 p.m. ET “Eric Bolling The Balance” won the hour with 467,000 impressions, handily beating CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” with 447,000.

The 9 p.m. hour had a similar story.

Newsmax’s new show “Chris Plante The Right Squad” pulled an audience of 325,000 impressions, defeating CNN’s Whole Story with 293,000.

And at 10 p.m. “Greg Kelly Reports” again took first place with 278,000 viewers, compared to Chris Wallace giving CNN an audience of just 263,000.

As media columnist Joe Concha observed, when a primetime anchor like Anderson Cooper tells the audience “he couldn’t blame them if they never watch the network again, these things tend to happen.”

Indeed.

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