It’s now just been reported that Chris Wallace is leaving CNN to “explore podcasting”. With the recent new CNN is firing hundreds of employees after going from 13.3 million average viewers in 2016 to… 800k in 2024. Comcast is looking to ditch their dumpster fire MSNBC, CNBC, Oxygen, Sci-Fi, and Bravo networks because they’re probably putting out the same or worse decline as cnn. Peacock, NBCs streaming service has yet to turn a profit. And the icing on the cake? “According to Forbes, there were only three cable networks in 2023 with an average audience above one million viewers, down from five the previous year and down from 19 in 2013.” They’re dying on the vine, their streaming services can’t make money, and they are too useless to even keep around as propaganda rags. With the potential death of the first AAA game publisher on the horizon (Ubisoft) we are seeing largest consequences of “get woke go broke” in our lifetimes.
Update: The Guardian is no longer posting on X, Don Lemon is leaving X, expect more to follow suit. This is just hilarious.
Edit 2: numbers reflect an average from last Wednesday to Friday. That marks a 54% decrease in the network's viewership average in the month of October (1.765 million viewers) as well as a 51% decrease in the network's year-to-date 2024 average (1.655 million viewers). Additionally, on Friday MSNBC saw 636,000 viewers and 61,000 in the demo, making it the network's lowest rated non-holiday night of the year.
I think many seem to agree that the best thing for TV as a whole is a return to the '90s era of specializations and a philosophy that supports programming with actual depth and isn't reliant on displaying gross caricatures of the worst aspects of humanity.
That last point is what I personally see in much of the reality TV that took over the medium in the 2000s and proliferated almost every network.
It wouldn't surprise me if those involved in producing reality TV were receiving some kind of ESG-like funding to enable and exaggerate the worst human behaviors and structure it in a way that would sort of dumb down its viewers.
Then again, that's my rather biased perspective on that topic; I totally understand if others disagree with me.