In a matter of hours after Election Day, so many MSNBC viewers turned the channel the network showed a 54% drop in viewership from October, according to an article by The Wrap, an entertainment website.
Citing ratings from Nielsen, the article said MSNBC scored about 6 million viewers on election night but that number had cratered to 636,000 viewers by Friday, just three days after Trump won the White House.
Over on CNN, it fared a little less worse than rival MSNBC with a 36% drop in viewers since October.
CNN drew about 5 million viewers on election night compared to 6 million at MSNBC, while their hated right-wing rival Fox News was watched by 10 million.
Curtis Houck, of the Media Research Center, says the liberal audiences are depressed and in hiding after being assured Kamala Harris would win.
“The Left, at this point,” Houck tells AFN, “is wallowing, and in a state of panic, that I don't think they want to have a conversation about what's going on.”
Houck and MRC happily documented that state of denial, beginning on election night, when pundits who had warned Trump would end democracy and jail them were confronted with Hispanics and blacks supporting Trump in record numbers.
Both CNN and MSNBC have bounced from somber warnings about Trump bringing back the Third Reich to happily fantasizing "convicted felon" Trump could be headed to a prison cell rather than the White House.
Beyond just losing their audiences, both MSNBC and CNN are likely to lose employees, too, after layoffs were announced days after Trump’s win.
Puck News was the first news outlet to report “hundreds” of layoffs are coming at CNN, where a brief attempt to appear more politically neutral was reversed after CEO Chris Licht was fired in 2023.
Houck says the layoffs at CNN will follow previous layoffs at the cable news outlet.
Over at MSNBC, which is owned by Comcast, company president Mike Cavanagh shocked the public with plans for a “new, well-capitalized company owned by our shareholders and comprised of our strong portfolio of cable networks.”
Cavanagh’s announcement, which he made during a routine earnings call, set off reports Comcast was putting MSNBC up for sale.
Houck says that report lit up social media but it’s not quite the truth as of yet.
“Comcast, I think,” Houck observes, “is seeing that there's no real money in news because who wants to advertise on MSNBC when the audience is getting smaller and smaller and smaller.”
