The basic business model of cable news is keeping people addicted to the constant drama of world events. Post-election, much of the liberal base has chosen to unplug, and with a shortage of world events (no matter how much the media tries to hype them up, both the wars in Israel and Ukraine are old news) viewership has fallen lower than the World Curling Championships in Manitoba. MSNBC has been hit pretty hard, but CNN is really turning into the walking dead.

Since the election, CNN has seen a 45 percent drop in prime-time viewership, down to only 394,000 total viewers. Overall, this year CNN has had its worst-ever performance among viewers in the key demographic…

Earlier this month, during the week of Dec. 2, CNN’s prime-time lineup averaged just 367,000 viewers. One week earlier, during the generally quiet time around Thanksgiving, CNN averaged 297,000 viewers.

What’s CNN gonna do about it?

CNN is not conceding defeat. In a press release issued last week trumpeting the network’s accomplishments, it pointed out that CNN was still the fourth most-watched cable network throughout the day, averaging 493,000 total viewers.

After the death of soap operas, there’s not much competition for daytime programming. So CNN is bragging about being fourth in the slow races.

Also CNN is moving being having actual ‘viewers’…

While most networks still measure success by looking at traditional TV viewership, CNN has indicated that it has largely moved past that metric

So it’s launching a subscription service whose results it won’t discuss.

the network launched a paywall in October for $3.99 per month. The network declined to provide data on how many customers the service has… CNN is hoping that the subscription service can offset some of the losses from its television business, an aim that had also motivated its short-lived CNN Plus streaming service in the early months of 2022.

What does CNN even produce that anyone would want to subscribe to?

“I think that the only sustainable model for any big distributed content company is to have a subscription,” said political journalist Chris Cillizza, who worked at the network until he was laid off in 2022. “What’s hard for me is: What is CNN known for? CNN is known for breaking news. People turn it on when something big happens. And I think that’s a really good brand journalistically, but I just don’t know how you make money off it.”

Does CNN break news? What news has CNN broken?

CNN’s idea of ‘breaking news’ is still the 70s idea of sending a remote to a traffic accident and having a reported bloviate in front of it. When done in a war zone in the 90s, this looked good for cable viewers who were excited that they were getting a live feed from Baghdad or Islambad or some Islamic bad. But in the age of Twitter, nobody is impressed.

A CNN executive, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly, said it’s wrong to compare the network’s audience to that of Fox News and MSNBC, which are more ideologically oriented. The better comparison, this person said, is to the BBC, which similarly has a large global newsgathering operation and a worldwide audience.

The BBC is funded through taxes and fines. CNN isn’t. Yet.