Monday should have been a banner day for CNN’s New Day, the new morning show launched by network chief Jeff Zucker and co-hosted by Chris Cuomo and Kate Bolduan. New Day scored the very first interview with Prince William after the birth of his son and the promotion around the event was impossible to miss. The ratings, though, were disastrous. New Day hit a new low with only 216,000 total viewers and just 60,000 viewers in the advertiser-friendly 25-54 demo.
This beats New Day’s previous low, achieved on July 24 when 75,000 demo and 229,000 total viewers tuned in. Monday, New Day even lost to sister station HLN:
Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends won the morning with 220,000 viewers in the demo and 1.018 million watching in total. With 101,000 among adults 25-54, MSNBC’s Morning Joe had half of FNC’s pull in the demo and just over a third in terms of total viewers with 324,000. CNN’s sister station HLN’s Morning Express had 87,000 in the demo and 240,000 viewers overall.
New Day represents Zucker’s highest profile and most extreme retooling since taking over the flailing cable news network. Zucker made his name running NBC’s Today Show during its ratings prime and one of the first moves he made at CNN was to boot longtime ratings loser Soledad O’Brien out of her morning slot to make room for New Day.
While one ratings day means little, this has to be a major disappointment for CNN. Obviously the network was hoping for banner ratings that might introduce new viewers to the show. New Day is very much a clone of the network morning shows with its somewhat forced family atmosphere and sunny disposition.
Instead, though, after pouring all of its promotional resources into the Price William interview, CNN ends up with ratings worse than what led to the end of Soledad O’Brien’s CNN career.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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