CNN’s Woes: Unbiased and Unloved
CNN’s Woes: Unbiased and Unloved
AN ELECTION should be good business for a cable news channel. Alas, this is less true if, like CNN, you try to be unbiased. When Mitt Romney says that 47% of Americans are moochers, or Barack Obama says that entrepreneurs didn’t build their own businesses, partisan viewers crave a partisan response. Either the candidate hates America or he is being quoted out of context.
Fox News assures conservative viewers that Democrats’ gaffes fall in the former category, and Republicans’ in the latter. MSNBC, vice versa. CNN tries to be fair. Viewers hate that. Its ratings in America are sliding, while Fox and MSNBC are doing well (see chart).
In the year to mid-September an average of 577,000 people have watched CNN during primetime, 25% fewer than tuned into MSNBC and 69% fewer than Fox attracted. Ratings affect CNN’s two revenue streams: sales of adverts and the fees that cable operators pay them to carry the channel. CNN, which is owned by Time Warner, has a thriving international division. Yet America accounts for 80% of its revenues, so a slump at home hurts.
