Just a quick post that I found funny. The Hill reports that CNN's seven hour climate debate lost in ratings to both MSNBC and Fox News, who just had their regular programming. Over the seven hour debate CNN averaged 1.1 million viewers. In comparison, MSNBC had 1.7 million while Fox News had 2.5 million. The 1.1 million viewers is more than CNN usually gets but the ratings are abysmal for a network that needed the ratings desperate. During prime time they got 1.4 million viewers but that is still way less than MSNBC at 2.2 and Fox News at 3.2 million.
Given how many big names were involved it's crazy to think that the event failed this badly. The obvious question is why. One possibility is that CNN is just doing terrible in general. They lost a lot of their credibility among viewers, even those on the left wing. And they have to compete with MSNBC which has similar politics but more charismatic anchors. Even Democrats have better choices to get their news from.
But I think the idea of a climate debate is pretty dumb in the first place. Climate change isn't anyone's first priority and Americans don't agree that it's even happening let alone it being an important issue. And even people that do agree with it don't have it as a number one issue. It's not something that most people care about.
I also think that Republicans didn't really want to hate watch this. Climate change isn't a priority issue for them either. With each candidate going by themselves there was also very little entertainment value either. What is the point of just watching people talk about their policies?
But the biggest problem of all? The event was seven hours long! Nobody is going to watch a seven hour event. I don't care what network the event is, if it's seven hours long I'm not watching it. Hell, I thought the two and half hour long debates over two nights was a slog, but seven hours? Beyond crazy. It's no wonder they didn't hang onto any viewers.
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