Anderson Cooper Gets Teabagged By The Competition

The October ratings are in for the primetime cable news programs and CNN is coming in 4^th place. Even MSNBC and HLN beat them. Anderson Cooper, who was one of the first “news” people to use the “tea bag” term, apparently has gotten tea bagged by Greta Van Sutren, Nancy Grace and get this Olbermann’s repeats!

From The New York Times’ Media Decoder: 

Individually, the CNN shows were beaten resoundingly by all the Fox News programs, but also lost to all of the MSNBC programs, including a repeat of Keith Olbermann’s 8 p.m. edition of “Countdown,” which beat the 10 p.m. hour of CNN’s signature prime-time program, “Anderson Cooper 360.”

Again that was a first.

Mr. Cooper had 211,000 viewers to 223,000 for Mr. Olbermann’s repeat. That meant Mr. Cooper finished fourth and last in the 10 p.m. hour because, besides being well behind the leader, Greta Van Susteren, who had 538,000 viewers, he was also beaten by a repeat of Nancy Grace’s 8 p.m. show on HLN, which averaged 222,000.

It also appears that almost all of CNN’s primetime line up comes in last, except for the old fossil Larry King who managed to come in third by the skin of his teeth:

The only CNN show from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. that did not finish last was Larry King, which was third, ahead of the new Joy Behar show on HLN. But Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News had a huge lead with 659,000 viewers in that age group. Second was Rachel Maddow on MSNBC with 242,000.

Mr. King averaged 224,000 and Ms. Behar 181,000.

CNN claims that views are more interested in partisan news opinion than straight news:

CNN has steered opinion hosts like Nancy Grace to HLN, while maintaining more news-oriented shows on CNN itself. When news events are not being intensely followed, CNN executives acknowledge, viewers seem to be looking for partisan views more than objective coverage.

I find this excuse a little hard to believe. Anyone who has ever watched CNN can see they are pretty partisan in their coverage.  The funny thing is that CNN is losing ratings because the share the same liberal opinion you can find on MSNBC and HLN.  If CNN were to adopt a more conservative tone or even a neutral one, they would offer something different and could actually start eating Fox’s rating. The only reason Fox is number one is because they don’t offer delve in the same leftist ideology that the other three share.

If CNN cannot bring itself to let go the left wing dogma, perhaps they could try picking a small fight with the White House. It could provide them with the just enough of a ratings boost. Can you imagine a dust up between Anita Dunn and Anderson Cooper? My money is on Anita!

Via Memeorandum

Via:The New York Times’ Media Decoder