Cable News Moves Players Around
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Since the election, Fox News has watched their ratings drop and CNN and MSNBC have seen their ratings go up.
The pattern seems to follow which party is in power. When Trump and the GOP were in charge, Fox News sat high on the ratings mountain. Now with Biden and the Dems taking control, CNN and MSNBC watch their numbers climb.
Now, if we were talking about real journalism and not cable news, the needle should not move like that, depending on which party is in charge.
But cable news is not journalism. Basically, they are mouthpieces for whichever party they support.
For the past few years, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson topped the primetime ratings. But, looking at the numbers from Friday, you would have to go down 10 spots before a show from Fox News made the list.
MSNBC MADDOW 5,152,000
CNN COOPER 4,855,000
CNN CUOMO 4,320,000
CNN BURNETT 4,221,000
MSNBC O'DONNELL 4,055,000
CNN LEMON 3,891,000
CNN TAPPER 3,803,000
MSNBC HAYES 3,740,000
MSNBC REID 3,369,000
FOXNEWS TUCKER 3,360,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 3,013,000
FOXNEWS INGRAHAM 2,561,000
Yesterday Fox News announced that they were shuffling their daytime lineup and moving their hosts around.
Nothing earth-shaking in the moves, except that Martha MacCallum gets knocked down from 7 PM back to 3 PM. Fox did not call it a demotion, although it clearly was.
MacCallum’s old spot at 7 PM will be filled for now with rotating hosts. If you were hoping that the 7 O’clock spot would continue to focus on news over opinion, you might be disappointed. First up in the 7 PM slot is Brian Kilmeade. There goes the news portion out the window.
As for CNN, they are also are moving around the chess pieces. Again, unless you are a diehard cable news watcher, nothing really big. CNN did feed the ego of Jake Tapper and gave him an extra hour.
There was word inside CNN that the network wanted to fill Tapper’s Sunday morning show State of the Union with Dana Bash taking over. Sources say Tapper pitched a fit and they have settles on Tapper doing State of the Union two days a month and Bash doing the other two days.
Bash deserved to be the full-time host of the show, but CNN likes their male-dominated programming. The Zucker run network still doesn’t have a female host in primetime. Staring at 4 PM, CNN is a complete sausage fest till midnight, except for Erin Burnett taking up the 7 PM hour.
CNN announced their changes, but it is still clear that the representation of women on CNN is still a low priority for Zucker.
Speaking of egos, CNN’s White House Correspondent Jim Acosta, whose favorite topic to cover is Jim Acosta is moving away from the White House and will now be the Chief Domestic Correspondent for CNN.
