Cable news is dying. This is another industry that is in complete decline.
In our ongoing fascination of the media industry, we are seeing a radical transformation. Over the last few decades, things have changed a great deal due to the introduction of alternate options.
When it comes to information, the Internet was the killer. This introduced a realm that makes it impossible for incumbents to compete long term.
The following is the response provided by Groq:
Here are the Nielsen ratings for CNN from 2000 to the latest available data:
2000: 0.44 household rating, 1.1 million viewers (Source: Nielsen Media Research)
2001: 0.45 household rating, 1.2 million viewers
2002: 0.43 household rating, 1.1 million viewers
2003: 0.41 household rating, 1.0 million viewers
2004: 0.39 household rating, 944,000 viewers
2005: 0.37 household rating, 933,000 viewers
2006: 0.35 household rating, 911,000 viewers
2007: 0.34 household rating, 894,000 viewers
2008: 0.33 household rating, 877,000 viewers
2009: 0.31 household rating, 854,000 viewers
2010: 0.29 household rating, 833,000 viewers
2011: 0.27 household rating, 814,000 viewers
2012: 0.26 household rating, 799,000 viewers
2013: 0.25 household rating, 785,000 viewers
2014: 0.24 household rating, 772,000 viewers
2015: 0.23 household rating, 759,000 viewers
2016: 0.22 household rating, 746,000 viewers
2017: 0.21 household rating, 734,000 viewers
2018: 0.20 household rating, 722,000 viewers
2019: 0.19 household rating, 710,000 viewers
2020: 0.18 household rating, 698,000 viewers (Source: Nielsen Media Research, as of March 2020)
2021: 0.17 household rating, 686,000 viewers (Source: Nielsen Media Research, as of March 2021)
2022: 0.16 household rating, 674,000 viewers (Source: Nielsen Media Research, as of March 2022)
There was a time when CNN was the standard for news. Look at what happened over the last 20+ years.
In this article we dive into it a bit deeper.
The End of Cable News
So why is cable news dead?
The numbers only show one network. In the United States, we also have FoxNews and MSNBC as the other part of the trifecta. I will grant that I selected the one with the least identity. The other two have a niche they cater to.
Where this becomes an industry wide problem is the fact we saw this before.
Do you know who David Muir is?
If you do not, it is not surprising. He is the host of ABC world News Tonight, for the past decade. One of the predecessors was a man named Peter Jennings.
The Jennings, Brokaw, Rather era dominated television news for a couple decades. These three were household names before the introduction of cable news.
What we are dealing with is a demographic situation.
Cable news is supported by the Baby Boomers. This is from their era. CNN became popular in the early 1990s followed by the introduction of FoxNews and MSNBC. For the past 30 years, Boomers have gotten a great deal of their news from one of these three sources.
This is no different than the prior generation who tuned into one of Jennings, Brokaw or Rather. People had their favorites but they tuned in.
As that generation died off, so did the viewership.
We are going to see the same thing with cable news. Each day, more than 5,000 of their viewer-age bracket meets their demise. Whatever percentage watch cable news, that is quite a hit on a daily basis.
Like the news programs earlier, it is tough to overcome the demographic decline.
Even Worse For Cable News
The show with David Muir, according to Wikipedia is the most popular of the major network news shows. He averages somewhere around 2 million viewers.
This is a fairly impressive number, until it is put into context.
Doing a quick search, this is what we find for Peter Jennings:
According to Nielsen Media Research, here are the ratings for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings during his hosting days:
1983-1984 (Jennings' first year as anchor): 4.4 household rating, 7.4 million viewers
1984-1985: 4.6 household rating, 7.8 million viewers
1985-1986: 4.8 household rating, 8.2 million viewers
1986-1987: 5.0 household rating, 8.5 million viewers
1987-1988: 5.2 household rating, 9.0 million viewers
1988-1989: 5.4 household rating, 9.4 million viewers
1989-1990: 5.6 household rating, 9.8 million viewers
That is a loss of almost 80% of the audience. This is a compounded problem when we consider the fact there are a lot more people in the United States today as compared to 1990.
It is likely that Boomers are ones who tune into Muir (and some of the other shows). The problem for cable news is the fact that the Millennials and GenZ are not showing up. Hence, the Baby Boomers (and perhaps some GenX) is all they have left.
This is going to be something to watch. In totality, we are looking at roughly 3.5 million viewers for cable news. How long do they keep them?
We will monitor this over the next couple years to see where it all ends up.