With the bleak Q1 2010 numbers put up by CNN, soon-to-not-be Politico’s Michael Calderone takes the pulse of nearly a dozen TV news anchors, analysts, professors and executives about what is going on CNN, and what can — or should — be done to right the ratings of “The most trusted name in news.”
Aaron Brown, who was replaced in 2005 by [Anderson] Cooper at 10 p.m., said that CNN doesn’t have the “big, broad personalities” that seem to excel these days in the evenings on cable news. Brown included himself in that group, along with Campbell Brown, John King, and Cooper.
“If I were at CNN, the thing that would scare me is not that we’re losing, but that it’s that re-runs are beating us,” Brown said. “At 10 p.m., a two-hour-old ‘Countdown’ is beating my guy, the guy I have invested millions in promotional dollars.”
Advertisement
Another former cable news host, Phil Donahue, who had a show on MSNBC in the early 2000’s hopes CNN does nothing. “At this moment, their competition is more entertaining than they are,” Donahue told Calderone. “And I admire them for holding on and not being seduced by that kind of arm-waving.”