Post-Trump Ratings Slump Hits Cable News and Major Media Outlets
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The “Trump bump” that benefitted media across the board appears to be coming to an end, just as former President Donald Trump predicted, according to a Washington Post story Monday.
Recalling Trump’s 2017 prediction that “Newspapers, television, all forms of media will tank if I’m not there, because without me, their ratings are going down the tubes,” Post media reporter Paul Farhi wrote that, at least about this, Trump “wasn’t entirely wrong.”
“Barely two months into the post-Trump era, news outlets are indeed losing much of the audience and readership they gained during his chaotic presidency,” Farhi wrote. “In other words, journalism’s Trump bump may be giving way to a slump.”
Citing data from Nielsen, Farhi notes that CNN lost 45% of its prime time audience in the past five weeks, and MSNBC’s audience dropped 26% in the same time period.
“Fox News – the most Trump-friendly of the three networks in its prime-time opinion shows – has essentially regained its leading position by standing still,” the report says, noting that Fox’s ratings have dropped just 6% since the first weeks of the year.
Traffic to popular mainstream news sites also dropped in February, according to the report, although numbers were already down compared to February 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic became a major news story. The Post saw the number of unique visitors to its website drop 26% from January, and 7% from 2020, and the New York Times lost 17% compared to January, and 16% from February 2020.
While Farhi notes that major news events – including the pandemic, Trump’s refusal to accept the election results, and Trump’s second impeachment trial – led to viewer growth, the impact of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on ratings may also be a factor in the dramatic viewership losses some of the networks have seen since January. Both CNN and MSNBC saw record-high ratings for its coverage of the insurrection, and CNN ended up winning the month in viewership overall – with a 153% increase over its January 2020 viewership. Fox was third for the month in January, losing the month for the first time in 20 years, but the network appears to be bouncing back from its post-election ratings losses. Without the Capitol attack, and the viewership spike that came with it, the networks’ declines from January to February may not have been so sharp.
Cable news networks normally see a post-election ratings decline, but in February 2017, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox had all seen ratings increases over the previous year. By the end of 2017, all three cable news networks had viewership increases over 2016, during which the networks had also seen record viewership.
However, evidence does indicate that Trump did bump up ratings for all three cable news networks: in 2014, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox collectively averaged 2.8 million viewers per night during prime time. “By 2019, Trump’s third year in office, that number had nearly doubled to 5.3 million each night,” Farhi wrote.
The report adds that newspapers also benefitted from the Trump presidency, with both the New York Times and the Washington Post seeing subscription increases over the course of Trump’s presidential term. Smaller publications, including Vanity Fair and The Atlantic, also saw subscriptions jump during that time.
