RUTHFULLY YOURS

Remember when CNN let anchor Chris Cuomo spend a year fluffing his own older brother, then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, live on the air, even as Andrew’s COVID-19 policies needlessly killed thousands?

Remember when that same governor was forced to resign over sexual harassment allgations?

Remember when Chris was finally forced out of CNN when the infotainment network was publicly humiliated by the younger Cuomo’s misdeeds?

Remember when it turned out that Chris Cuomo had serious sexual misconduct allegations against him, too?

Remember when, just a few days later, a CNN producer quit over accusations of “luring girls for ‘sexual subservience’ training?”

Remember how that was just the first CNN producer who left in December over “improper conduct with a minor” allegations?

That’s just the juicy stuff. CNN ratings have been in a tailspin since Presidentish Joe Biden took office (and I do mean took office) last year. The Trump-obsessed infotainment service has been floundering for months — but that was nothing compared to its latest ratings woes.

The Daily Mail reports:

The once-proud leader in cable news averaged just 548,000 viewers during the week of January 3, a precipitous drop from the nearly 2.7 million viewers for the same week in 2021, according to the most recent ratings.

Those numbers were supercharged by the left-leaning network’s coverage of the January 6 Capitol Riot, which resulted in CNN having its most-watched day since Ted Turner launched the news outlet in 1980.

CNN also saw an 86 percent decline in the much-desirable 25-to-54 demographic, with a paltry 113,000 tuned in last week, compared to the 822,000 CNN averaged a year ago. [Emphasis added]

I guess nobody wants to watch the sex abuse network anymore, but there’s a bit more to it than that:

It’s the economy, stupid — yet CNN remains fixated on a year-old non-insurrection that most people are just over. CNN ratings prove it.

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Jeff Zucker has headed up CNN for almost ten years now. The network enjoyed success running his Four Years Hate message against then-President Donald Trump, but over the last year, something has become clear to me.

Zucker isn’t a news guy; he’s an entertainment guy who came up the ranks of NBC (later NBC Universal) serving up “news lite” at the Today Show, and then as chief of NBC’s entertainment division.

Why the network chose the executive who presided over NBC as its once-proud stable of primetime shows went stale and then floundered might never be known.

However, with a TV-friendly nemesis like Trump in office, Zucker knew exactly what to do, and judging by those CNN ratings from 2017-2020, Zucker executed his nasty business rather well.

But losing Trump was as if George Lucas had killed off Darth Vader at the end of Star Wars — how would he have gotten a satisfying sequel without the Big Bad?

So Zucker and his network have been flailing around for the last year, trying to bring Trump back to life just as desperately as JJ Abrams brought Emperor Palpatine back out of nowhere in Rise of Skywalker.

It just didn’t work, and the latest Star Wars movie might just be the last Star Wars movie, at least for a good long time.

Zucker thought that entertainment-oriented News Lite puff-balls like Cuomo, Don Lemon, and (dough-ball in this case) Brian Stelter could serve up hard news.

But they turned out to be a useless bunch of non-news ninnies.

Zucker thought he could tell audiences scary stories about Orange Man Bad long after Orange Man Bad was gone.

Zucker forgot that the first N in CNN is supposed to stand for “News” and not “Ninnies.”

It’s time to exit stage left, Jeff, while there’s still something remaining of your network to save.

Or maybe it’s too late.

I hope it is.