Hate is so last year. From Eric Boehlert:
[W]hereas CNN last year traded away its good name in exchange for debuting Beck's factually challenged and hateful brand of broadcasting, at least CNN execs were getting a ratings boost out of the Faustian bargain. Today, Beck's still making a mockery out of CNN's reputation on a daily basis, as he disparages liberals, gays, Democrats, blacks, immigrants, and Muslims at will. But in return, CNN's now stuck with a Beck program that's trapped in neutral and shows signs of sliding into reverse.And Beck's ratings are plummeting. Advertisers should have been already skittish aligning their products with a show that worries that every single Muslim-American is working with the terrorists, but add poor ratings to hate and you've got a recipe for an advertiser exodus. Not to mention, it's hard for the senior brass to defend Beck against the very real inside-CNN insurgency taking place against the hate jock when Beck isn't even bringing in viewers, but rather is simply tarnishing CNN's good name.
Well played, CNN....
It truly has become amateur hour at CNN.
James Zogby got it right late last year. After watching Beck's nearly year-long McCarthy-like crusade against Arabs and Muslims, the president of the Arab American Institute wrote, "While [the CNN] network may have hoped that Beck's flamboyant style would increase ratings, the cost to their integrity has been staggering."...
Indeed, the dirty little media secret is that Beck's show has hit a ratings brick wall. Despite the glowing press from The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others, which showered Beck with profiles because his show was being touted as the fastest-growing program on prime-time cable news, Beck in recent months has been flat-lining. In fact, he's actually losing viewers.
The Nielsen rating numbers from April were particularly telling and highlighted how Beck's show appears to have completely maxed out less than 12 months after its debut. April was a news-heavy month, which produced a huge spike in cable news viewership following the campus massacre at Virginia Tech. Except, that is, for Glenn Beck. (On the night of the VT shooting, Glenn Beck finished last among prime-time cable news programs, excluding those on CNBC.)
Overall, for the month of April, ratings for CNN Headline News' prime-time lineup, which is anchored by Beck, were up a microscopic 4 percent, compared to healthy, double-digit gains posted by CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC.
A hot show? Please, Glenn Beck has become as cool as the other side of the pillow. For the month of April, Glenn Beck's original airing in the 7 p.m. time slot averaged 304,000 viewers, down from last September, when the program drew 321,000 viewers each night. In viewers aged 25-54, the key demographic group sought by advertisers, Glenn Beck averaged 122,000 last month. Again, that's down from September, when the program drew 149,000. So much for the being "the fastest-growing show on cable news," which was how Beck himself described the program earlier this year.
Last September was also when Glenn Beck surpassed MSNBC's Hardball in viewers 25-54, outpacing Chris Matthews' show by 17,000 viewers. No more. In April, Hardball beat Glenn Beck by 40,000 viewers in the 25-54 demographic each night. And often the tally these days is far larger. For instance, on Tuesday, May 1, Hardball bested Glenn Beck by nearly 200,000 total viewers. And with the presidential election season heating up, it's unlikely that trend toward the Beltway-centric Hardball and away from Glenn Beck is going to change in the coming weeks and months.
