Their coverage was unprecedentedly negative, oftentimes their news fake, and their hosts and guests were frequently driven to near insanity in attempting to denounce him as the greatest threat to the country since King George.
The networks hyped nearly all of Trump’s actions as scandals (or potential scandals), turned otherwise ordinary functions of an administration into ‘bombshells’ that never exploded, and spoke of his Cabinet as if they were all criminals waiting to be indicted.
But all of the outsized coverage seemed to work: Ratings were up somewhat, revenue climbed, and hating Trump turned out to be a good business model for the news industry.
Then something happened following the November election: Trump was not successful in winning reelection (let’s just put it that way), and suddenly, the networks didn’t have the billionaire real estate magnate and TV personality to kick around anymore.
And boy, has it hurt.
The Daily Wire reports that one of the biggest anti-Trump voices, the very first cable news outlet CNN, has suffered mightily in the post-Trump era in terms of attracting eyeballs:
CNN has lost about a million nightly viewers on average since President Donald Trump left the White House, and the liberal network is drawing nearly 50% fewer viewers in the key 24-54 age group, according to a new report.
“CNN averaged 2.5 million primetime viewers from Nov. 4, the day following the presidential election, through Inauguration Day on Jan. 20. But viewers fled the liberal network once President Biden took office, and CNN has averaged only 1.6 million primetime viewers from Jan. 21 through March 15,” Fox reported.
“CNN’s viewership during the primetime hours of 8-11 p.m. ET dropped 36% since Biden took office after it spiked following Election Day. CNN’s primetime viewership decline was even sharper among the key demographic of adults age 25-to-54, plummeting 47% during the same period.”
Mind you, even in the ‘heyday’ immediately following the election, 2.4 primetime viewers is still shockingly bad; by comparison, Fox News hosts average about a million more viewers than that per show in prime time, and thus far more viewers than CNN’s paltry 1.6 million figure.
But still: Trump was obviously better for business for CNN than he is now that he’s out of office.
Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, who now mans the first hour of prime time on The First TV streaming network, predicted in November in the wake of the election that the anti-Trump cable networks would dry up and blow away after he left office.
“NBC News, CNN, and the other networks are going to collapse almost entirely,” O’Reilly said after Trump leaves office and the Biden administration takes office.
“They don’t have any credibility,” he continued, adding “everybody knew… they were trying to destroy Trump.”
“Now you’re going to tell the truth,” he mocked. “It’s over.”
The veteran newsman went on to predict how the media would cover Biden (and he was right).
“Whatever Biden does will be the greatest thing,” O’Reilly said.
“He’s not going to hold many press conferences, he’s not going to be around,” he added, prophetically.
The ‘mainstream media’ had its best years when Trump was in office, such as they were. Now that he’s not in office, they’re revenue model is gone as well.