Chart showing ratings increases for the Spritzler Report since the election.
MSNBC and CNN Fight to Dig Out of a Postelection Ratings Hole
Ratings for the No. 2 and No. 3 cable news networks have plummeted since Trump’s victory, while Fox News remains the leader
By Isabella Simonetti, WSJ
Dec. 15, 2024 5:30 am ET
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski said they are taking a new approach to how they cover President-elect Donald Trump. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Cable news loyalists have grown a lot less loyal—to MSNBC and CNN, at least.
While viewers are flocking to Fox News in the wake of Donald Trump’s election win last month, ratings for MSNBC and CNN have tumbled. The declines are far worse than what happened the last time Trump won, in 2016.
MSNBC averaged 603,000 prime-time viewers from the day after the election through Dec. 8, down by more than half from the network’s year-to-date average through the election, according to Nielsen data. CNN was down 46%, to 401,000 viewers. Meanwhile, Fox News was up 12%, averaging about 2.7 million viewers.
MSNBC and CNN both reported dips for the month following the 2016 election, but they weren’t nearly as steep. CNN’s drop was off a higher baseline.
Partisan viewers “turn away in disgust when it’s the other side having that postelection euphoria,” said Johanna Dunaway, a political science professor and research director of the Syracuse University Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship.
Dunaway said Democrats and Republicans grow disenfranchised with the media and society when their candidates lose. After Biden won in 2020, Fox News’s prime-time viewership fell by 6%. Following Barack Obama’s 2012 win against Mitt Romney in the presidential election, Fox News’s prime-time viewership was down 13%.
A ratings rebound is possible once Trump is inaugurated, if steps he takes rile up liberal viewers enough to bring them back in front of their TVs.
That happened in 2017, when this type of “resistance” viewing fueled a ratings surge for MSNBC that lasted through Trump’s first term, with the pandemic providing further tailwinds. Executives at MSNBC are confident there will be a repeat of that dynamic in January, according to people familiar with the matter.
Viewers will likely “start coming back when there is action,” said Christina Bellantoni, who runs the Media Center at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
The cable landscape changed dramatically in the past eight years as Americans cut the cable-TV cord at an accelerated pace. Cable audiences as a whole have shrunk, but news channels remain very profitable for their parent companies.
MSNBC, which will anchor a new cable company that owner Comcast plans to spin off next year, had a solid year in the lead-up to the election. It had nabbed the No. 2 spot in the ratings from CNN. MSNBC also beat CNN on election night for the first time, garnering six million prime-time viewers. Fox News has consistently been the ratings winner.
Fox News parent Fox Corp. FOXA -0.55%decrease; red down pointing triangle and Wall Street Journal parent News Corp share common ownership.
In recent years CNN has made efforts to bring more pro-Trump Republicans on-air. In contrast, MSNBC has leaned into its left-leaning personalities to drive much of its ratings success.
Kash Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI director, has threatened the media, while repeating the president-elect’s false claims about the 2020 election. In an interview last year on Steve Bannon’s podcast, he said, “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped President Biden rig presidential elections.”
Last month, “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski shocked viewers when the duo shared they had met with Trump in Mar-a-Lago as part of an effort to “do something different.” Their admission frustrated pundits on both sides of the political aisle.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins outside the White House. Photo: Alex Brandon/Associated Press
MSNBC is bringing in some fresh voices after the election. The network recently announced that NBC News correspondent Ali Vitali will take over as anchor of “Way Too Early,” the 5 a.m. lead-in to “Morning Joe.” Jonathan Lemire, the current host of the program, is becoming a co-host of the 9 a.m. hour of “Morning Joe.”
Some on-air personalities in MSNBC’s lineup, including Alex Wagner, Chris Hayes and Lawrence O’Donnell, have their contracts coming up next year.
CNN recently elevated primetime host Kaitlan Collins to chief White House correspondent, a job that she is doing in conjunction with her 9 p.m. show, “The Source.”
CNN declined to comment on its plan to win back TV viewers but noted it has a strong digital footprint.
As the networks look to draw viewers back, alternative media sources such as podcasts have gained traction with politically inclined audiences.
“There’s a lot of market opportunities” for others to elbow in, said Daniel Kreiss, a professor of political communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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