When the Derek Chauvin verdict came in, Nexstar’s News Nation covered the story as breaking news and it lead right into their prime time lineup.

With the trial happening up the road from News Nation’s headquarters in Chicago, you would expect this to bring a lot of eyeballs to the new cable news channel.

As the verdict came down, over 4 million people watched CNN for the coverage. Another 4 million tuned into ABC News. Over 3 million tuned into Fox News, 3 million plus more watched MSNBC and another 3 + million watched on CBS.

So, how many people tuned into Nexstar’s News Nation……. 2.5 million?

Nope.

How about 1 million?

Nah.

It has to be at least 500,000, right?

Not even close.

News Nation was only able to pull in just 159 thousand viewers for the verdict.

Although a very small number it was still the first time that News Nation had cracked 100,000 viewers and it had to give their primetime news shows a lift….right?

Nope.

Viewership dropped off to just 33 thousand viewers to News Nation’s Early Edition and it got worse from there.

Viewership dropped to just 24 thousand for the Donlon Report and by the time Ashleigh Banfield’s show hit the air, viewership was down to just 20,000 total viewers and a really bad just 1,000 viewers in the demo.

Nexstar suits are said to be in a panic about how bad the ratings are for News Nation despite spending millions of dollars on promotion.

Sources tell FTVLive that the company is once again looking at retooling the channel yet again.

Stay tuned….