CNN’s Jake Tapper and MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Struggle to Fill Ratings Hole in Prime Time
Cable news’s 9 p.m. hour finally has hosts on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC.
A series of changes shook the cable news industry over the last year and left two of the major three networks without a permanent host at 9 p.m., an hour seen as one of the most coveted ratings slots in the industry.
Fox News, throughout the turmoil, has remained steady. Sean Hannity, a ratings titan, has helmed the 9 p.m. hour at the network for years.
CNN and MSNBC are a different story. Both networks had a big job on their hands this year: CNN had to plug the drain left by Chris Cuomo, who was fired last year, and MSNBC had to fill the four-day hole left by Rachel Maddow (she still hosts her highly-rated show on Mondays).
Recently, CNN announced that Jake Tapper will take over on CNN through the November midterm elections. MSNBC over the summer named Alex Wagner as Maddow’s Tuesday-through-Friday replacement.
Both hosts have failed to match the ratings of their predecessors.
Tapper is now a full two weeks into his run in prime time. New CNN president Christ Licht moved the veteran anchor from his 4 p.m. show The Lead to the 9 p.m. hour as part of his strategy to refocus the network, which he dubs the most “trusted brand in the world when it comes to journalism,” around news and not opinion.
Licht’s strategy would be a considerable departure from CNN’s closest competitors, which feature opinion-driven content in prime time, each targeting a different political flavor.
Tapper’s debut on October 11 featured highly-publicized interviews with both President Joe Biden and actor Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, but still landed with a thud. Tapper brought in 854,000 total viewers and 211,000 viewers in the key 25-54 age demographic coveted by advertisers.
While a small bump for the time slot, which had featured a revolving door of hosts, Tapper still came in a distant third that night as Wagner brought in 1.59 million total viewers and Hannity scored 2.63 million total viewers.
Tapper did manage to beat Wagner in the demo, a metric MSNBC has struggled with in recent months (with the exception of Maddow).
From his debut on Tuesday Oct. 11 to his show last Tuesday, Oct. 18, Tapper dropped 32% in total viewers and 46% in demo. His show last night was down 28% from the debut in total viewers and 48% in the demo.
Moreover, Tapper sees a notable decline in viewership from his lead-in, Anderson Cooper at 8 p.m.
Consider last week (and we’ll exclude Monday and Thursday because it’s hard for anyone to compete with football): On Tuesday, Tapper saw a 28% drop from Cooper. On Wednesday, he was down 8%. Friday, 12%. You get the picture.
A CNN spokesperson commented on Tapper’s ratings, saying, “While Jake Tapper is anchoring 9pm through the midterms, we are proud of the fact that the program is substantive and smart – featuring a number of newsmakers, from the President of the United States, to leading politicians, and veteran journalists and more. It always takes time for a new program to find its audience, much less a program intended to have a short run.”
Wagner has struggled on MSNBC as well. Last week was her lowest-rated week since launching the show in August. Wagner averaged 1.36 million total viewers and 129,000 viewers in the demo from Tuesday through Friday.
During the same week, Tapper averaged 560,000 total viewers and 120,000 demo viewers.
Hannity continued his dominance of the time slot with 2.75 million total viewers during the hour and 210,000 demo viewers.
