Well, would you look at that? CNN, the self-proclaimed “most trusted name in news,” just managed to do the impossible — make themselves almost entirely irrelevant.
Not just a little irrelevant, like “maybe people will stream it later” irrelevant. No, we’re talking “pulling numbers so low you’d think they were broadcasting interpretive dance at 3 a.m.” irrelevant. Their primetime lineup dipped under 500,000 viewers. You could get more people to watch a YouTube video of someone making toast.
Kaitlan Collins, who the network has apparently anointed as some kind of rising star, must be thrilled with her 464,000 total viewers. You know, when you consider the fact that there are more people stuck in traffic in Atlanta on a Wednesday night than watching her show, it really puts things in perspective.
And Abby Phillip didn’t exactly pick up the slack, clocking in at a whopping 459,000. Laura Coates? She could barely convince 269,000 folks to stick around past 11 p.m. Honestly, more people probably tuned into C-SPAN to watch the annual reading of obscure tax legislation.
But the real kicker — and you gotta laugh at this — is the golden 25-54 demographic. That’s the group advertisers actually care about, the supposed lifeblood of broadcast media. CNN couldn’t even crack 100,000 viewers there. Anderson Cooper — their star, mind you — barely squeaked out 93,000. Poor Laura Coates closed out the night with 46,000. I mean, you could probably get more 25-54-year-olds interested in a documentary about beige paint.
Meanwhile, over at MSNBC, which isn’t exactly the poster child for thrilling television either, even their worst hour outperformed CNN’s best. Stephanie Ruhle’s “The 11th Hour” brought in 799,000 viewers. And Fox News? Oh, just casually crushing it with Trace Gallagher pulling 1.5 million. It’s like watching a high school football team take on the NFL and wondering why the game isn’t close.
But this isn’t just one bad night for CNN. No, this is a full-blown, slow-motion car crash that’s been happening for years. Remember last November? CNN posted its lowest-rated week since 2001 — a time when flip phones were cutting-edge technology. They pulled an average of 268,000 viewers that week, while Fox News was cruising at 1.4 million.
CNN’s full-scale collapse continues rapidly. It reaches a remarkable new low led by @kaitlancollins and @abbydphillip: fewer than 500,000 viewers total in prime-time! That’s almost impossible to do even if you wanted it.
Also, they’re well below 100k for viewers under 55. pic.twitter.com/4gG4jMWBTH
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 27, 2025
And don’t even get started on CNN+. You remember CNN+, right? The streaming service that cost $300 million to launch, featured Chris Wallace as its big catch, and flamed out faster than a Fourth of July sparkler? It was so bad, it made Quibi look like a success story.
And let’s not forget one of CNN’s crowning achievements in journalistic malpractice: the Nicholas Sandmann debacle. They smeared a teenager on national TV, got slapped with a $275 million lawsuit, and had to settle. That’s not just a black eye — that’s a full body cast.
You have to hand it to CNN, though. It takes a special kind of talent — or maybe stubborn arrogance — to spend years lecturing half the country about how wrong they are, only to watch your own audience vanish like mist in the sun. They kept doubling down, kept sneering at the people they once called viewers, and now they’re sitting around wondering why nobody’s watching.
Here’s a hint, CNN: maybe if you spent less time pushing agendas and more time doing actual journalism — you know, that thing you pretend to be experts at — you wouldn’t be hemorrhaging viewers faster than a bucket with a dozen holes. But hey, keep it up. At this rate, the History Channel’s reruns of “Ancient Aliens” are going to be more trusted sources of information than anything you guys put on primetime.
