Newscaster Chris Wallace left Fox News Channel last year to join CNN+, a new streaming service. Since the service’s launch last month, Wallace has hosted a program at 6 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays.
But he’s very, very dissatisfied, according to a bombshell new report.
One anonymous insider told reporter Jon Nicosia these dramatic accounts of Chris Wallace’s “daily breakdowns” over the “miserable launch” of CNN+.
“He is having staffers count how many times a day his promo is playing,” the insider added. “He’s telling anyone that will listen he wants Cuomo’s old time slot… [He wants a] CNN show or is threatening to walk.”
SOURCE: Chris Wallace is "having daily breakdowns" over the "miserable launch" of @CNNplus. Wants a "CNN show or is threatening to walk" they go on. "He is having staffers count how many times a day his promo is playing"
— Jon Nicosia (@NewsPolitics) April 12, 2022
SOURCE CONT'D: "He's telling anyone that will listen he wants Cuomo's old time slot"
— Jon Nicosia (@NewsPolitics) April 13, 2022
Wallace made headlines in November for abruptly leaving Fox News Channel, where the liberal anchor had hosted a show for years. Since then, he has opened up.
“I just no longer felt comfortable with the programming at Fox,” he told The New York Times last month. He admittedly complained to Fox management after his outrage about Tucker Carlson’s docuseries from November.
Previously, Wallace had always refused to denounce the network’s more controversial pundits, like Sean Hannity, according to a Times profile from 2020.
“I think Fox has changed over the course of the last year and a half,” he told the Times last month. He also expressed his excitement for CNN+ and the less constrained format of streamed TV.
Now, Wallace is grousing about CNN+ amid reports of dismal ratings.
“Fewer than 10,000 people are using CNN+ on a daily basis two weeks into its existence, according to people familiar with the matter,” CNBC reported Tuesday, after speaking to anonymous insiders familiar with the closely guarded data.
“To put that daily user number in perspective, CNN’s cable network suffered a sharp decline in viewership last year but still rang up an average of 773,000 total viewers a day.”
It’s no wonder that Wallace is reportedly upset!
Wallace, with all his equivocating, has alienated both Republicans and Democrats.
In 2006, former President Bill Clinton told him on-air, “You’ve got that little smirk on your face, and you think you’re so clever.”
Barack Obama waited until April 2016 to go on Wallace’s program, despite repeated requests for an interview. “For eight years you knock on the door to the castle, and nobody answers,” Wallace told Politico at the time.
In 2019, Donald Trump unfavorably compared Wallace to his father, the 60 Minutes anchor Mike Wallace. In a tweet, Trump referred to Fox News Sunday as “Chris’s lowest rated (unless I’m on) morning show.” He added, “The nasty & obnoxious Chris Wallace… will never be his father, Mike!”
According to Nielsen data from October, Wallace’s Fox News Sunday drew less than half the audience of other programs in the same timeslot, like This Week or Meet the Press.
Fittingly, Chris Wallace has drawn drawing hardly any viewers on either the right or the left, on either Fox or CNN+.
The Horn editorial team