Joe Biden’s bumbling appearance at a CNN town hall event in Ohio on Wednesday failed to attract enough viewers to make it competitive with a normal evening at Fox News.
CNN welcomed the president to talk about vaccines for children, the inflation nightmare his policies have thus far created, and other items. According to Bloomberg, the man who received more votes than any president in history was a dud for struggling CNN.
“[CNN] averaged fewer than 1.5 million viewers from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Eastern, with 306,000 in the 25-54 demographic most sought by advertisers. That compared with 2.7 million for Fox News, with 464,000 in the key demographic, according to Nielsen data shared by the network,” Bloomberg noted.
As Bloomberg pointed out, CNN is in a ratings free fall that began after the 2020 election and Biden’s inauguration.
“These days, even booking the president is no guarantee that a large audience will tune in. In total viewers, CNN trailed both Fox News and MSNBC,” Bloomberg noted.
CNN has actually lost 68 percent of its viewers compared to last year, Forbes reported at the end of last month. The network has even lost more than half of its viewers in prime time without former President Donald Trump to obsess over.
“All of the cable news networks saw ratings declines compared to the second quarter of 2020, with CNN experiencing the biggest year-over-year drop in prime time, down 57%. Fox News declined by 42%, and MSNBC had the smallest drop among total viewers in prime, down 37%,” Forbes noted.
Biden’s appearance on CNN was of course a total disaster, as at one point the 78-year-old’s brain froze up for the better part of a minute.
“I’ve heard you speak about it, because you alway — I’m not being solicitous, but it’s, but you — you’re always straight up about what you’re doing,” Biden told CNN host Don Lemon.
“And the question is whether or not we should be in a position where, you, are, why can’t the, the, the, experts say, ‘We know that this virus is in fact, is, is, is, is, it’s going to be — or, excuse me, w — we, we know why all the drugs approved are not temporarily approved but permanently approved,’” he said when asked about vaccines for children.
Crushing it pic.twitter.com/DI21CUSp7k
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 22, 2021
Apparently the moment and others weren’t must-see-TV.
Not only were viewers not watching on CNN, but people in Ohio apparently weren’t interested in seeing the man responsible for their grocery bills skyrocketing along with their gas prices.
Images shared from inside the event showed Biden’s town hall looked a lot like a 2020 Biden rally — mostly empty.
What the Biden CNN town hall looks like from the back of the auditorium: pic.twitter.com/juUehd7PDu
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) July 22, 2021
The man who received more votes than former President Barack Obama is not much of a draw.
Despite now occupying the Oval Office, he isn’t capable of pushing CNN above a routine night over at Fox News.