Last week on The Other Podcast, I lamented that my co-host John Hoge didn’t have time to get us a sound bite of the Paw Patrol theme song to play during our segment about the neverending woes at CNN (whose programming gets lower ratings than the Nickelodeon kiddie cartoon). A few recent headlines should suffice to convey the situation:
Don Lemon’s three-day hiatus from “CNN This Morning” resulted in a 5% increase in viewership for the struggling cable news show, which was thrown into turmoil by the co-host’s sexist remarks about GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley last week.
Viewership of “CNN This Morning” reached a total of 617,000 households on Feb. 17 — the first day of Lemon’s absence. The next day, viewership reached 678,000 total households during the three-hour block this past Monday, according to data provided by Samba TV, the analytics firm that provides real-time data on audience measurement for streaming services.
“CNN This Morning” attracted an even larger audience on Tuesday, when it drew 709,000 households, according to Samba TV. Lemon returned on Wednesday. . . .
“Average viewership the two days following his comments was up 5% compared to the average daily viewership the week before,” [Dallas Lawrence, a senior vice president at Samba TV] said.
“In fact, two out of the three most-watched days in the past eight analyzed were the days in which Lemon was absent.” . . .
A chastened Lemon returned to the airwaves on Wednesday morning. Before taking his seat alongside co-host Poppy Harlow, Lemon posted an apology on Twitter.
“I appreciate the opportunity to be back on @CNNThisMorning today,” he wrote amid calls for him to have been fired.
“To my network, my colleagues and our incredible audience — I’m sorry.”
“I’ve heard you, I’m learning from you, and I’m committed to doing better. See you soon,” he wrote.
During Wednesday’s return, Lemon never made mention of the controversy on air.
Lemon sparked outrage during the Feb. 16 broadcast of “CNN This Morning” when he told Harlow and fellow co-host Kaitlan Collins that the 51-year-old Haley was “not in her prime.”
The remark prompted Harlow, 40, to storm off the set in disgust.
I appreciate the opportunity to be back on @CNNThisMorning today. To my network, my colleagues and our incredible audience — I’m sorry. I’ve heard you, I’m learning from you, and I’m committed to doing better.
See you soon.
What I liked best was that part about “our incredible audience” — “incredible” meaning unbelievable, because how is it possible that a supposedly important news network could have so few viewers?
At any rate, I’ve given John sufficient warning to get that sound bite ready, so tune in at 7 p.m. ET tonight for The Other Podcast.
Paw Patrol, Paw Patrol, whenever you’re in trouble!
Paw Patrol, Paw Patrol, we’ll be there on the double!
No job’s too big, no pup’s too small.
Paw Patrol, we’re on the roll!
Because you don’t watch CNN — nobody watches CNN — you might not be aware that they employ a person named “Don Lemon,” who is both (a) homosexual and (b) unpopular with cable news audiences. Whether there is any cause-and-effect relationship between (a) and (b), the question of whether a gay man is qualified to speak on when a woman is “in her prime” might arouse curiosity even among the small cohort of people who watch CNN. Really, is this the guy that CNN executives are counting on to revive their last-place network’s dismal ratings?
Don Lemon says Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime as a politician because she’s not in her 20’s, 30’s or 40’s. Holy shit. She’s only 51! Biden’s 80! This may be the dumbest thing ever said on CNN. And I love that he cited Google as his source: pic.twitter.com/l1CzTYlkjX
In the aftermath of that disaster — I mean, it was a disaster even by CNN standards — the unpopular homosexual Don Lemon was absent from the show (that nobody watches) this morning, And as if the hole wasn’t already deep enough, CNN decided to keep digging.
That’s an artful way of phrasing it, eh? Lemon’s comments were “widely viewed as sexist,” as if there was some room for doubt on the matter, so you couldn’t just flatly state that the comments were sexist. Betcha $100 the New York Times wasn’t so weasel-wordy about sexist comments when Donald Trump was involved. Ah, but however unpopular Don Lemon may be, he is a homosexual, so that everybody knows he would never “grab ’em by the [female anatomy],” which might explain why the Times headline writers decided to cut him slack — more slack than Lemon’s boss at the last-place news network was willing to cut him:
CNN’s chairman, Chris Licht, opened his daily 9 a.m. editorial call by saying that the remarks by Mr. Lemon, which were widely viewed as sexist and insensitive, had left him “disappointed.”
“His remarks were upsetting, unacceptable and unfair to his co-hosts, and ultimately a huge distraction to the great work of this organization,” Mr. Licht told his staff, according to a recording of the call obtained by The New York Times.
When your employees are leaking recordings of the morning editorial call to the New York Times, your staff morale may be even lower than your ratings which, I hasten to remind you, are in the toilet. When you’re paying three people to anchor your morning show, and your ratings are lower than Paw Patrol, maybe the problem is more than just a few controversial comments. Maybe the problem is something more fundamental and pervasive, like the mindless partisan loyalty to the Democrats that defines your entire concept of what qualifies as “news.”
As a news organization, you never want the story to be about you. The saying that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” doesn’t apply to the news media, which lives or dies by its credibility, and the recent stream of news about CNN’s personnel problems isn’t helping them in that regard:
Chris Cuomo, the former host of Cuomo Prime Time on CNN, claims he was so devastated after his firing that he was “going to kill everybody and myself.”
Cuomo was fired back in 2021 when CNN had to pretend that it cared about journalistic standards in the wake of revelations that Cuomo was giving advice to his brother Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor of New York, who’d been accused of sexual harassment by a number of staffers.
“I had to accept [my firing] because [otherwise] I was going to kill everybody, including myself,” Cuomo told Anthony Scaramucci during an interview on the latter’s podcast.
A few short months after Cuomo was fired, CNN president Jeff Zucker unexpectedly resigned from CNN due to his failure to disclose a consensual relationship with CNN executive vice president and chief marketing officer Allison Gollust. The relationship was reportedly an open secret at CNN, and Cuomo was the one who blew the whistle on the relationship. CNN anchor Brian Stelter accused his former colleague of trying to “burn the place down,” in reference to CNN.
“He’s not going out quietly. There were reports he was going to get paid the millions of dollars on the remainder of his contract. As a source said earlier today, he was trying to burn the place down,” Stelter added. “He was going to court trying to burn the place down and claiming he had incriminating information. If this is the case, this is a domino effect that begins with Andrew Cuomo and Chris Cuomo being fired. That’s a remarkable domino event I think that’s part of the story.” Stelter was later fired from the network in August 2022.
Cuomo certainly had an axe to grind — and still does, even though he quickly got hired by NewsNation after CNN booted him. Despite the new gig, he only gets a fraction of the audience he had at CNN, which, coincidentally, is a fraction of the audience that Fox News gets. Cuomo reportedly averages about 63,000 viewers a night at NewsNation.
“I will never be [No. 1] again,” Cuomo conceded. He is now suing CNN for $125 million, claiming the network is guilty of “smearing” his journalistic integrity. It’s cute the way this man-child who used to interview his own brother on CNN claims to have journalistic integrity.
As you can see, in every hour from 5 p.m.-midnight Eastern, the Fox News audience is between four and six times larger than the CNN audience. CNN isn’t just losing, they’re being humiliated. And it gets worse when you consider how tiny CNN’s audiences are in comparison to some other cable programs:
Yes, you read that chart correctly: There are entire hours of CNN prime-time that get fewer viewers than Paw Patrol on Nickelodeon at 11 a.m.
You may laugh at a kiddie cartoon if you wish, but Paw Patrol never promoted Michael Avenatti or the “Russian collusion” hoax.
As for the 63,000 viewers of Chris Cuomo’s NewsNation show — dear God, that’s a mere fraction of the audience for many YouTubers. “CodyB Fireworks” has 463,000 subscribers and got more than 2 million views on one of their fireworks shows in July. Tim Pool has more than a million YouTube subscribers and routinely gets more than 150,000 views on his videos. Police Activity has more than 4 million YouTube subscribers and frequently gets more than a half-million views on their videos. So not only is Chris Cuomo’s audience smaller than a YouTube commentator like Tim Pool, but he’s also got fewer viewers than either Cody’s fireworks or a YouTube channel that’s just bodycam footage of police shootings.
Chris Cuomo is a complete failure, but as for his lawsuit against CNN, I hope he bankrupts them. They deserve to lose every cent they’ve got.
Reports released Wednesday suggest that Jake Tapper’s executive producer, Federico Quadrani, was fired in early February for an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate.
Sources claimed that Quadrani was released from his position for “hooking up with” a senior producer at the network, PageSix reported. Apparently news of the alleged relationship and firing is spreading rapidly throughout CNN, a source told the PageSix, warning that “it’s going to get out.”
Sources noted that Quadrani was already under a human resources “investigation of sorts,” over the relationship. “There were some complaints. No one had proof, and these things are hard to prove. Jake was aware of the investigation,” another source told PageSix.
Just as Quadrani was about to be cleared in the investigation, Tapper was reportedly “presented with something that he couldn’t ignore” on Feb. 8, and Quadrani was fired by Feb 10, according to PageSix. “Jake was made aware of it and acted quickly. Someone discovered something accidentally, and brought it to Tapper. He delivered it to [human resources], and they were terminated,” one of the sources told the outlet.
Colleagues are reportedly shocked by the situation, with one of the sources saying Quadrani and the producer are “consenting adults and no one’s particularly feeling like this is some big scandal,” according to PageSix
Another CNN insider confirmed the information in PageSix to Fox News Digital, adding that “complaints were made” about Quadrani in the last week. The news comes almost exactly a year after former CNN President Jeff Zucker left the organization following a “consensual relationship with [his] closest colleague.”
CNN started to inform staffers of layoffs, as its chairman and CEO Chris Licht wrote that notices will go out on Wednesday and Thursday.
“Today we will notify a limited number of individuals, largely some of our paid contributors, as part of a recalibrated reporting strategy,” Licht wrote in a memo, shared on Twitter by CNN’s Oliver Darcy. “Tomorrow we will notify impacted employees, and tomorrow afternoon I will follow up with more details of these changes.”
Licht had announced earlier this fall that the network would cut positions. He wrote that he “recently described this process as a gut punch, because I know that is how it feels for all of us.”
“It will be a difficult time for everyone,” Licht wrote in the memo. “If your job has been impacted, you will learn through an in-person meeting or via Zoom, depending on your location.” He added that the affected employees would receive information about severance and their last day. Those who were eligible for 2022 bonuses would still receive them based on performance.
“I know these changes affect both our departing colleagues and those who remain, and we have resources designed to support you,” Licht wrote.
A spokeswoman declined to share additional details. CNN has about 4,000 employees worldwide. A couple hundred employees are expected to be affected, according to a source. The cuts are not expected to impact major on-air staffers, as well as photo journalists and video news editors, but the layoffs are said to include some recognizable names.
Happy Holidays! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go dance around in jubilation, like a cornerback who just scored a pick-six to win the game.
Really, I could just throw a link to Ace of Spades on this story and be done with it, because what can be said about Brian Stelter that Ace has not already said? While I don’t think Ace coined the nickname “Tater” for Stelter, he certainly popularized it, and if you’re a Tater hater, AOSHQ has been daily must-reading for the past six or seven years. How many thousands of Tater jokes has Ace made since Stelter arrived on CNN? Any attempt to estimate the number is futile, like trying to count the stars in the sky. And did any media personality more perfectly embody Trump Derangement Syndrome than CNN’s chubby clown? There was a symbiotic relationship between Ace and Tater, and I’m sure Ace is mourning the loss of his favorite punching bag:
CNN is dropping its Sunday show Reliable Sources while its host, Brian Stelter, is exiting the network.
A spokesperson for CNN said, “CNN will end its Reliable Sources program on Sunday, August 21st. As a result Brian Stelter will leave the company. We appreciate his contributions to the network and wish him well as he embarks on new endeavors.”
(Translation: “Good-bye, fatso.”)
The show’s team was notified of the cancellation on Thursday. Their jobs also are being cut, but they will be given the opportunity to apply for new jobs at CNN, according to the network. The network did not say what programming would replace the one-hour program. . . .
(They could air Spongebob Squarepants reruns and get higher ratings.)
His exit is one of the biggest moves so far at the network under new chairman and CEO Chris Licht, who joined the network on May 1. . . .
Stelter also has been a frequent on-air presence during CNN news programming, particularly in commenting on Donald Trump and his attacks on the media. That made Stelter a frequent target on the right — and from hosts on Fox News — for his coverage of Trump and the CNN rival. . . .
(Actually what “made Stelter a frequent target on the right” — and by “the right,” they mean mainly Ace of Spades — is that he’s fat, he’s bald, he has no discernible talent, and nobody ever really liked him, which is why his ratings were worse than reruns of Spongebob Squarepants.)
Stelter was one of [former CNN boss Jeff] Zucker’s high-profile hires, having been lured away from The New York Times. Just out of college, Stelter joined the Times in 2007, and quickly made a mark for his frequent scoops and social media presence. . . .
Last week, longtime CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin announced that he was parting ways with the network.
Wow, losing both Stelter and Toobin in the span of two weeks — what will Ace do now? The Punchline Shortage of 2022 has arrived.
“It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.”
— The Federalist No. 1
America’s form of government is unique among nations, in that we are a federal republic. Other nations may call themselves such, but they do not have our distinct history, in which 13 separate British colonies, having fought and won a war for independence from their homeland, then developed a new charter for their combined government as a federation of states. As a condition of ratifying that charter, the constitutional conventions of several states — most particularly Virginia — insisted that it must be amended to include guarantees of certain rights.
Most of the provisions of the Bill of Rights address what the Americans had inherited from the Whig tradition in England (e.g., religious freedom, trial by jury, etc.) or else seek to prevent the sort of abuses of power (e.g., unwarranted search and seizure) by which the colonists had felt oppressed under the British rule. But the most unique expressions of the rights our founders saw fit to prescribe were contained in the Second Amendment (the right to “keep and bear arms” which “shall not be infringed”) and the Tenth Amendment (reserving to the states all powers not delegated to the federal government). In both cases, these amendments express the concerns of the Anti-Federalists that the federal government might obtain too much power, becoming not the servant of the people, but rather their master. You cannot understand our Constitution and its Bill of Rights without studying the debates over ratification, a point made by M.E. Bradford in Original Intentions: On the Making and Ratification of the United States Constitution. Every student of American history is (or rather should be) familiar with The Federalist Papers, in which James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay made their arguments in favor of ratifying the new Constitution. But those arguments cannot be fully understood without reference to the arguments of the Anti-Federalists, who opposed ratification. The Constitution could not have been adopted as the supreme law of the land if its proponents had not succeeded in assuring delegates to the state ratification conventions that this new government would not become a centralized tyrannical power, as the Anti-Federalists claimed.
This is why the Second Amendment and the Tenth Amendment are so important to understanding what “our democracy” actually is. By ensuring that the population could never be disarmed, the founders meant to guarantee that “We the People” would forever be able to defend our liberty. The reference to “a well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” is a direct expression of the Anti-Federalist concern about the federal government becoming a tyrannical power. Militias were subsidiary to the individual states, and a safeguard of their security and freedom. The phrase “well-regulated” would be better understood as meaning “well-trained,” i.e., proficient in the use of arms. A militia could be summoned quickly to deal with a crisis only if the population in general owned weapons and were capable of using them effectively. The inclusion of the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights was the states saying to the newly-created federal power: “Don’t even think about disarming our people. What part of ‘shall not be infringed’ do we have to explain to you?” And the Tenth Amendment added an exclamation point to this opposition to centralized power.
In the ensuing 233 years, many Americans have lost their fear of a tyrannical authority. Indeed, some of our “elite” seem to love such authority, which they hope to control for their own tyrannical purposes, and these elites have lately gotten into the habit of using the phrase “our democracy” as if there were a consensus agreement in favor of the nebulous concept this phrase is meant to express. Specifically, the elites who endlessly blather on about “our democracy” claim that it is threatened by Donald Trump and his supporters, so that “our democracy” can only be safe if 74 million voters are effectively disenfranchised. In other words, “our democracy” requires the suppression of dissent, which certainly is not what most Americans think of as democracy.
Appearing on CNN’s New Day Thursday morning, Don Lemon once again urged the media to hold Republicans to a different standard than Democrats in their media coverage.
The primetime host tied the GOP to the threat of “growing extremism” on the right. He warned journalists to not give a “false equivalence” to both sides, and instead acknowledge Republicans were endangering America.
“We sit around and we talk about these things and we want to give this false equivalence to Democrats and Republicans. That is not where we are right now. Republicans are doing something that is very dangerous to our society and we have to acknowledge that. We have to acknowledge that as Americans, we must acknowledge that as journalists because if we don’t, we are not doing our jobs,” Lemon declared. . . .
Lemon was referring to Republicans who continue to support former President Trump after the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol, as well as the recent Supreme Court ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“They have to answer for those questions if they come here on CNN, they must answer for that. If they go on MSNBC, they must answer for that. If they go on ABC, they must answer for that. And they cannot expect to be coddled when they go on to a news organization or if they step in front of a crowd of supporters or voters or Americans.” . . .
Lemon referred to an interview he did with a former spokesperson for the Oath Keepers saying Republicans had become associated with “extremists.” He rejected any Republican opposition to that belief. “You have the inmates running the asylum basically. You have the extremists because I know there are Republicans sitting out there going, ‘Don Lemon that’s not what we are.’ Maybe it’s not what you are but it’s what [the Republican] party has become and what you have allowed to happen,” he lectured.
Several critics noted that Lemon’s argument — “January 6 now! January 6 tomorrow! January 6 forever!” — was aimed at CNN’s new ownership, who want to get the network out of the ratings basement by ditching their Trump-obsessed left-wing slant.
He's giving @Discovery mgmt the middle finger along with his boss Chris Licht. Don is keeping '@CNN Zucker' programming it appears? 'They Have a Lot to Answer For': CNN's Don Lemon Says Media Must Not Accept 'False Equivalence' of Democrats to Republicans https://t.co/7WYHzAOp9t
Bitter Don Lemon lashes out on-air seemingly against new CNN boss Chris Licht as the "people who are in charge of what we…the American press puts out" and decries the desire to treat GOP fairly. "Republicans are doing something that is very dangerous to our society," he sneers. pic.twitter.com/jRr7Grz9Q6
There are so many issues where “Democratic operatives with bylines” have decided that only one side deserves a respectful hearing, so that the media’s thumb is always on the scale in our national debate, and these journalists believe “freedom of the press” requires the active suppression of dissenting voices. Fortunately, the proof is in the pudding, and we judge the wisdom of this one-sided approach by the results it produces. It’s not just that CNN has lower ratings than reruns of Spongebob Squarepants, but that the orchestrated anti-Trump hysteria of the so-called “mainstream” media — part of a “cabal” that foisted Joe Biden upon us — are apparently happy to see a nation groaning under record-high gas prices, out-of-control crime and a looming financial crisis, just as long as there is not a Republican in the White House!
Don Lemon and his ilk are advocates of centralized authority, one-party rule dictated by an unelected “elite” class, the exact sort of tyranny that our founders sought to prevent. This is what “our democracy” really means to them, and guess what? Don’t expect Don Lemon to invite me (or anyone else who shares my views) onto CNN to debate the meaning of “our democracy.” There can be no debate in “our democracy.”
CNN’s Brian Stelter, who delights in parroting leftist and Democratic Party narratives on his show “Reliable Sources,” will be out of his job soon, according to a new report. . . .
In May, Chris Licht, who has supposedly emphasized less opinion-oriented reporting, became the new head of CNN. Last Sunday, “Reliable Sources” had its worst-rated episode since September 2019, reaching only 580,000 viewers, the smallest audience since September 15, 2019.
In a memo to employees, Licht wrote, “… too many people have lost trust in the news media. I think we can be a beacon in regaining that trust by being an organization that exemplifies the best characteristics of journalism: fearlessly speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo, questioning group-think, and educating viewers and readers with straightforward facts and insightful commentary, while always being respectful of differing viewpoints.” . . .
In April, the daily version of “Reliable Sources” was dropped by CNN after they pulled the plug on CNN+. . . .
Stelter has displayed his partisanship for years.
I’m tryna get some right wing pundits together to start feeding Tater quotes and tips on background.
Like, we can alert Tater when we’re about to say something that is potentially cancellable, so he can be first to try to cancel us. Anything to get him clicks.
We can’t let Tater just fade away. We have to keep this incompetent’s career going despite his utter lack of qualifications or skill at it.
Tater is the straw that stirs the drink of conservative media. What are we, without Tater?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wake up in an “America” where there isn’t a grossly obese effeminate clown compulsively scanning rightwing Twitter feeds with his fat clumsy canoli-frigging fingers, just so he can issue stupid hot-takes and insipid snapbacks with that retard smile that says “Aren’t I clever” and also “I might have made in my pants again.”
We at least need to get him over on YouTube.
Too little, too late, I fear. We were insufficiently appreciative of Tater and, now that he’s about to get axed, we lament our impending loss. If it is indeed true that he will be fired from CNN — say it ain’t so, Tater! — I suppose he’ll go back to doing what he was doing before, but does anyone remember what that was? Because I had to Google it:
After graduating from college in May 2007, Stelter joined The New York Times as a media reporter in July of that year, aged 22.
In November 2013, he became the new host of CNN’s Reliable Sources and also chief media correspondent.
Wow, hired by the New York Times right out of college, and then grabbed up by CNN six years later. What a rapid ascent of the media hierarchy! It’s almost as if he were the beneficiary of some kind of favoritism in the media’s hiring practices. But how could that be? I have been assured that Our Journalism Overlords are exemplars of equity and fairness.
Could it be that I’ve been misled? Perish the thought!
