‘CNN This Morning’ fails to wake up network’s ratings

By Michael P. Hill Article may include affiliate links

CNN’s revamped morning show underperformed its already low-rated predecessor in its Nov. 1, 2022, debut.

An average of 387,000 viewers watched each hour of the debut of “CNN This Morning” Nov. 1, with 71,000 in the adult 25-54 demographic.

That’s down about 17,000 viewers overall and 7,000 in the demo over the average performance of “New Day” in the month before.

CNN invested considerable promotion and marketing for the new show and pulled Don Lemon out of primetime to anchor the show, along with dayside anchor Poppy Harlow and White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, who moved to New York for the new job.

Elsewhere on cable, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” registered 793,000 viewers, according to Nielsen data. “Fox & Friends” lead with 1.115 million in the 6 a.m. eastern hour.

“CNN This Morning” did outperform Newsmax’s “Rob Carson’s What in the World?,” a humor-driven offering that got 23,000 viewers, and NewsNation’s “Early Morning” with only 5,000 viewers at 6 a.m.

Broken down by hour, “This Morning” had 297,000 at 6 a.m., 356,000 at 7 a.m. and 508,000 at 8 a.m.

CNN managed to build on the high with the 9 a.m. eastern hour of “CNN Newsroom,” which had 510,000 viewers. The 10 a.m. hour reached 614,000, but then “At This Hour” dropped to 568,000.

Fox grew its audience after “Fox & Friends” went off the air and MSNBC’s fourth hour of “Morning Joe,” which is rated separately, grew to 882,000 viewers before “MSNBC Reports” took over at 10 a.m. with a deep dive to 659,000.

New shows often see a spike in viewers as people tune in to see what’s new — though the numbers often level off slightly shortly after. It’s not uncommon for a new show to dip in the ratings either and then slowly build an audience or remain flat or below its debut numbers (the latter of which is typically not a good sign for the show’s long-term survival).

Either way, the initial numbers for “CNN This Morning” aren’t impressive, especially considering the resources being invested in it. “This Morning” is also using a temporary studio as the network builds a new set for it.