No, CNN Executives Did Not Pull the Plug Early on Trump Town Hall

On Wednesday night, CNN hosted former President Donald Trump for a town hall event at Saint Anselm’s College, which ended at 9:09 p.m., roughly 69 minutes after it began. However, the TV programming guides listed the town hall as lasting until 9:30 p.m., which led some to report that the event was stopped early.

Puck’s Dylan Byers reported as such on Twitter, saying the network “stopped less than 70 minutes in,” adding network executives “could have gone longer if they wanted — which is usually what executives do with big ratings.”

Byers has extensively covered CNN and new CEO Chris Licht over the past year, and his assessment of the network’s new direction has often been unflattering. He is a terrific reporter who gets a lot right, but he got this wrong.

The network and the Trump campaign had always agreed to a 60-minute event. I asked a senior network executive about the 90-minute allotment on cable schedules Wednesday afternoon. I was told that the event was planned for an hour, but they expected it to go a little over the allotted time — perhaps one block more. And that’s precisely what happened.

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