Despite the fact that Nexstar’s News Nation has tried to hire just about anyone that has been fired for misconduct at other news outlets, the network continues to flounder in the ratings.

The Washington Post writes News Nation still draws rounding-error ratings, despite a small boost from the CNN veteran, who joined the network in October. It averaged about 63,000 viewers per night during 2022, ranking it 107th among national networks. By comparison, even ratings-challenged CNN — which has fallen behind Fox News and MSNBC — regularly attracts more than 10 times as many viewers per night.

At the moment, news isn’t even the leading draw on NewsNation. Its highest-rated program last year was daytime reruns of “Blue Bloods,” the Tom Selleck cop drama that is a holdover from WGN America, the cable channel NewsNation used to be.

“CNN and Fox have become echo chambers for a passionate audience that believes the same things as the hosts and producers of those networks,” says Michael Corn, NewsNation’s president of news. “Their playbook is, ‘Let’s interview five people who agree with us and put them on.’ … We believe there’s a huge audience that’s not being served by the other channels.”

Problem is that the “huge” audience is not watching News Nation.

While News Nation continues to say that they are a down-the-middle news operation, one only has to watch their interviews with former President Trump to see that is not even close to true.

Or, discussing Rep. George Santos’s multiple lies recently, NewsNation host Leland Vittert framed a question to a guest this way: “Am I being too conspiratorial to think that the New York Times and others … knew who George Santos was, and let him get elected so they’d have this phenomenal story and cudgel to beat Republicans up with?”

News Nation is just another biased cable news channel that doesn’t do the job nearly as well as the others.

Despite filling their lineup with cable news castoffs, there is a reason those people were cast off to begin with.

Nexstar really had a good chance to make this work. But, with Bill Shine pulling the strings and Sean Compton not having a clue, and Micheal Corn just outright confused, the original vision of a unbiased news outlet is never going to happen.