Daily Mail: "CNN Has Lost Two Thirds of Its Viewership Since 2016 Amid Growing Fears Network Is Circling the Drain"

LOL. Jake Tapper, you ridiculous preening cuck loser.

CNN has lost nearly two-thirds of its primetime viewers over the past decade, figures show.

The decrease, from roughly 1.3 million in 2016 to 553,000 now, is fueling rumors of a possible network sale -- something CNN's up-for-grabs parent company has vehemently denied.

The results recorded this month by Nielsen are actually an improvement from January, when stars like Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, Erin Burnett, and Kaitlan Collins only secured 488,000 sets of eyes.

"Stars?" They pull in as many viewers as Nerdrotic. Is Nerdrotic a "star" too?

The network's daytime lineup has seen a similar decline as hosts such as Wolf Blitzer failed to move the needle, dropping from 752,000 to 433,000.

When compared to the same part of the year in 2021, the drops were even more pronounced -- 71 percent for primetime and 73 percent during the day.

Several network executives told the Daily Mail that the results were worrisome, even amid broader industry trends.

A CNN source, meanwhile, blamed the poor showing on audiences consuming news through alternative means.

'The reality is that people just consume news differently now than they did ten years ago, and we're adapting to address that, reaching large audiences all over the world,' the source said.

Their appeal, like Spinal Tap's, has become more selective.

Boston isn't a big college town anyway.

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Several CEOs and lineup changes later, CNN's lack of success during Trump's second presidency is noticeable, sources said.

'It's not surprising that CNN's constant leadership void, which has largely rendered the cable network irrelevant with historic ratings declines, is leading ownership to explore yet another sale,' one said.

'Ownership at CNN is once again looking to jump ship just like the network's viewers have for the last decade after seeing its 2025 ratings slump to historic lows.

'Mark Thompson should have stayed in retirement as nothing can right the sinking ship that is CNN.'

In a related story, a liberal producer has quit CBS "News," probably because she's a hard-left liberal who refused to abide by Bari Weiss's demand for a more "heterodox" -- meaning, open to multiple perspectives and not just the default media left-liberal-antifa one -- news reportage.

Leftist outlets are making it sound as if the liberal producer who quit is a non-partisan who objects to Weiss's partisanship, but the full email makes it clear that she's a bitter, agenda-first liberal who is angry that she's not allowed to broadcast Democrat Party propaganda as "news."

For example, here's how the New York Times' agenda-first "media reporter" headlines the producer's goodbye letter:

NEW: "CBS Evening News" producer Alicia Hastey sends a bombshell farewell note:

Stories are "evaluated not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations." pic.twitter.com/4orZmbkqRI

-- Ben Mullin (@BenMullin) February 12, 2026

Other outlets, like The Wrap, similarly focus on that single sentence to the exclusion of all others.

Is that an accurate digest of the full letter? Why no, it's not.

Because key parts of her letter admit that she's angry at being directed to pursue a "heterodox" view of the news and cites Walter Cronkite for the proposition that "being liberal" results in "news reports" that are "fair, accurate, and unbiased."

First of all, this leftist declares her real problem: She objects to "heterodox" reporting, reporting taking in multiple views and not just the media-dominant hard left view, and contrasts this to her preferred "traditional broadcast norms," i.e., the same singular, enforced left-wing media narrative every other outlet pushes.

Next, she implicitly declares that the news is and always must remain liberal. Citing the old lefty Walter Cronkite as proof that the news must always have a left-wing slant:

The fact that the NYT's lefty "media reporter" chose to bury these admissions, and instead push a false line that this producer just wanted to keep politics out of "news," is proof that no, "what makes us liberals" does not result in news reports that are "fair, accurate, and unbiased."

Hello! Happy Thursday. I hope you're enjoying the better weather. (And I hope that you are in fact seeing better weather, of course.)

Tim Carney repurposes the left's line explaining why they should get to oppress whites, males, Christians and heterosexuals now -- "when you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression."

Always trust liberals like this cooze to be "fair, accurate, and unbiased."

From Instapundit:

SightBringer @_The_Prophet__

⚡️The institution is dead.

The numbers are a death certificate. Six percent trust means collapse already occurred. The system is running on inertia, not legitimacy.

The function has been replaced but the corpse is still moving. Journalism today performs motion without force. It speaks, but it no longer shapes. It still tells stories, but the stories don't root. They slide. The public sees them as theater, not signal.

The political system treats media like a proxy war. The public treats it like noise. The market treats it like a content factory. What is missing is belief. Belief that the person on the other side is seeking truth. Belief that they would suffer to get it right. Belief that the institution would fire them if they got it wrong.

That belief is gone.

There is no fixing this. The repair metaphor is wrong. You cannot fix something whose failure is structural. The architecture that bred trust was destroyed. What remains is a set of incentives that reward volume, engagement, and narrative loyalty.

The next phase has already begun. Truth will route around dead institutions the way the internet routes around broken nodes. Systems that show their working memory will take over. People will trust compression engines over pundits. Codexes over op-eds. Logging over storytelling.

Truth won't come from people who sound right.

It will come from systems that hurt when they lie.

That's where it's heading. That's already started.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:11 PM

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