by Frank Holmes, reporter
Former CNN host Chris Cuomo’s competitors used to be Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow. Now, he gets beaten by “SpongBob Square Pants,” “Paw Patrol,” “Bob’s Burgers,” “Cocomelon,” and reruns of “Seinfeld,” which has been off the air for two decades.
His NewsNation show has been a ratings flop…and it’s probably only going to get worse going forward.
Cuomo claimed he was a changed man on opening night. “I have learned lessons—good and bad—in the past many months,” Cuomo told the audience. “I have relied on my family, friends and therapist.”
But his ratings might be enough to put him back on the shrink’s couch.
His first show was seen by just 147,000 viewers, jumping to 191,000 his second day, October 5.
Things looked even worse in the most coveted demographic: adults aged 25 to 54. Cuomo scored just 8,000 viewers in that age group.
By comparison, Tucker Carlson trounced Cuomo, scoring 2.9 million viewers and 445,000 people in the top demographic. That’s 20 times as many total viewers, and 55 times as many viewers age 25-54.
At CNN, his “Cuomo Prime Time” won the crown as the network’s highest-rated show, pulling in around 1.3 million viewers a night. But Cuomo’s new 8 p.m. show, “Cuomo,” wasn’t even the number one show on his own network: He drew less than half of the audience captured by reruns of “Blue Bloods,” a pro-cop series starring Republican Tom Selleck.
Even with Cuomo’s ratings “surge” last Tuesday, NewsNation still came in behind conservative challenger Newsmax in the ratings war.
Eric Bolling’s Newsmax Show had a bigger audience overall, including twice as many viewers in the top demographic, as Cuomo’s comeback.
Cable News Graphs & Audience Shares Tue Oct 4
TotalShare
1⃣@FoxNews 51%
2⃣@MSNBC 28%
3⃣@CNN 17%
4⃣@Newsmax 4%25-54 year old DemoShare
1⃣@FoxNews 50%
2⃣@CNN 28%
3⃣@MSNBC 19%
4⃣@Newsmax 3%@NewsNation N/A pic.twitter.com/WNHv1ZHHFZ— RoadMN 📈 (@RoadMN) October 5, 2022
The Cuomo family had a hard 2021. His brother, Andrew, resigned as governor of New York after a series of sexual harassment scandals. CNN then fired Chris Cuomo in December, for advising his brother to be defiant and stay in power, and over a years-old sexual harassment allegation of his own.
He looked around elsewhere for another gig, but he eventually settled for NewsNation.
“I have decided that I can’t go back to what people see as ‘the big game,’” Cuomo told Dan Abrams in a seemingly Freudian slip in July, when he announced he’d be joining the upstart news network.
On Monday, Cuomo said he would be “more transparent about where my head is on the issues that we cover” from now on—as if he kept his political views secret at CNN.
The low-rated liberal is already showing his cards: On his debut episode, he admitted his coverage is not going to be evenhanded. “You got to look at both sides, but it doesn’t mean that it’s a 50-50 split.” He said Republicans had to denounce the idea that the 2020 election was not totally above board and honest. “Our election was not stolen,” he said.
Cuomo also said on his podcast, “The Chris Cuomo Project,” that he didn’t want to report on Biden’s failures, such as looking around a crowded room to try to find deceased Congresswoman Jackie Walorski, since Republicans did not criticize Donald Trump, whom Cuomo called an “egregious gaffe machine.”
And one of his first guests on his opening night was disgraced former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, who left TV in disgrace after reporting fake news. Shortly before the 2004 election, Rather reported that George W. Bush had not fulfilled his requirements as a member of the National Guard—but the story relied on forged documents. Rather never apologized, or even admitted he was wrong. Evidently, that’s Cuomo’s idea of great journalism.
Cuomo tried to horn in on Rather’s “old school” appeal by saying he’s “going to rely not on reading tweets to measure your feedback, I want to go old school here,” he said, giving out a toll-free number people could call in to reach him, like the Phil Donahue show of the Seventies.
No word on how many people took them up—but it was probably less than the number of people who own rotary phones.
.@ChrisCuomo wants to hear from YOU about what's affecting viewers across America. Call 1-844-968-7720 to let him know what you have to say.
Watch #Cuomo live: https://t.co/s8z9kDZInW pic.twitter.com/lefuFjnh9X
— NewsNation (@NewsNation) October 4, 2022
Not many people watched his show—and many who did were not impressed. “Chris Cuomo goes on his show on NewsNation and says that he’s been humbled. Bulls–t!” said SiriusXM radio host Megyn Kelly. “He’s already lying. No acknowledgment of really. What he actually did was smearing the women who are accusing his brother.”
NewsNation usually draws about 50,000 viewers, so even a small ratings bump might be worth Cuomo’s salary—which has taken a sharp cut over the last year.
Cuomo had reportedly been earning $6 million a year at CNN; industry figures think he’s netting $1 million at NewsNation. “I don’t think he had a lot of leverage. He’s damaged goods,” an insider told the New York Post.
But he may not care, as long as he has an outlet. “Chris has a huge ego. He loves to hear himself talk,” a source told the Post.
The problem is, to make a living as a talk show host, other people have to love hearing you talk, as well. So far, it doesn’t look like he’s succeeded with the second half of communication: listening.
“The problem for Cuomo is this… This is likely as good as it gets. When will Cuomo receive more media attention than for his debut? In a world with 500 channels and no shortage of left-wing news anchors posing as objective, why watch Cuomo?” asked John Nolte of Breitbart News.
“Yeah, he was CNN’s highest draw for a whole, but that’s like being the thinnest guy at fat camp,” Nolte said. “CNN was (and is) mired in last place largely because of dishonest liars like Chris Cuomo,”
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”