There is no way for CNN to win. Unless it's somehow a loss leader for its parent company, there's really no reason for it to exist. You can't make the news a compelling 24/7 product without turning into toxic partisan entertainment, a lesson Fox News learned early and MSNBC has successfully followed on with. There just isn't enough interesting news! There's no opportunity for a "centrist" cable news network, because what drives the constant attention is appeals to partisan agitation.
Fox News has about 1.5MM viewers, MSNBC close behind with ~1.2MM. CNN has 500k. Two things to note about those numbers: even for Fox, they're infinitesimal (Game of Thrones, which is premium cable content, averaged almost 30x more; the NYT has almost 10x more subscribers, there are more subscribers to The Atlantic Monthly, where this article ran, than reliable CNN watchers, &c). And, if you scope it down to the demographic ("under 54"), it's even bleaker: all the cable networks have a little over 100k viewers.
This is not a good product. Steven Colbert was right to warn Chris Licht off of taking this position.
Tim Alberta is an excellent writer, by the way; it's worth seeking out things he's written.
Fox News has about 1.5MM viewers, MSNBC close behind with ~1.2MM. CNN has 500k. Two things to note about those numbers: even for Fox, they're infinitesimal (Game of Thrones, which is premium cable content, averaged almost 30x more; the NYT has almost 10x more subscribers, there are more subscribers to The Atlantic Monthly, where this article ran, than reliable CNN watchers, &c). And, if you scope it down to the demographic ("under 54"), it's even bleaker: all the cable networks have a little over 100k viewers.
This is not a good product. Steven Colbert was right to warn Chris Licht off of taking this position.
Tim Alberta is an excellent writer, by the way; it's worth seeking out things he's written.