CNN Heroes Event Delivers Network’s Second Lowest Sunday Prime Time in Nearly a Quarter Century

CNN’s long-running special event, CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute, pulled in the second-lowest Sunday prime time for the network since 1997.

The program, cohosted by Anderson Cooper and Kelly Ripa, only pulled in 422,000 total average viewers and 42,000 viewers in the key 25-54 age demographic.

That is an astonishing 55 percent drop in total viewers from 2020 when CNN Heroes secured 945,000 total average viewers. 2021 saw an even greater drop in the demo, down 76 percent from 174,000 viewers the year before.

Cooper began hosting CNN Heroes in 2007. Online voters chose Shirley Raines as CNN’s hero of the year for the work her non-profit Beauty 2 the Streetz does helping to “provide food, clothing, and hair and makeup services to thousands of people” on Los Angeles’s Skid Row.

The only Sunday prime time show with a smaller audience on CNN in the last twenty-five years was during Super Bowl XLVII, which aired on CBS on February 3rd, 2013.