Mean Girls At MRC Insist On Immaturely Mocking CNN’s Allegedly Low Ratings

How do we know that the Media  Research Center is a partisan attack dog that cares nothing about actual “media research”? Because actual media researchers wouldn’t engage in abject gloating when a channel’s ratings drop. But that’s what the MRC — mostly NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck — has been doing for months when reporting on ratings at CNN.

Houck immaturely cheered back in March under the sneering headline “How Refreshing”:

Showing just how far CNN has fallen as they continue to struggle with symptoms of Trump withdrawal, Reliable Sources and host Brian Stelter suffered their worst rating of the year on Sunday as Nielsen Media Research showed a scant 936,000 total viewers subjected themselves to his hour of hate against Fox News and conservative media.

Worse yet, CNN’s ratings overall plummeted to their worst week of 2021.The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi dug into the Nielsen ratings on Monday and found CNN had hemorrhaged “45 percent of its prime-time audience in the past five weeks” with MSNBC down “26 percent in the same period” and the Fox News Channel only off by six percent.

Houck went on to huff: “On this past Sunday, Stelter’s show was more of the same, spewing hate in his never-ending quest to send Fox News employees to the unemployment rolls” — as if Houck doesn’t want to do the same to Stelter and every other CNN employee — and complained he said of Fox News, “Bottom line here, you are what you watch and it could make you sick.” Houck retorted, “Trust us, Brian. The feeling is mutual.”

In April, Houck chortled under the immature headline “Sad Trombone”:

On Monday, CNN’s Brianna Keilar began her new gig as New Day co-host after just over two years helming CNN Right Now and the weekday afternoon edition of CNN Newsroom, where she had come to establish herself as a condescending, far-left, Fox-hating, smug pundit with commentaries masquerading as journalism. 

Unfortunately for Keilar, the ratings were in and the show was down 30 percent in total viewership from last year and 33 percent in the 25-54 demographic. This should come as no surprise, but that would mean that the show had continued to reign as the least-watched show on CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC.

Nielsen Media Research ratings revealed that Monday’s debut featured a paltry average total of 495,000 viewers and a minuscule average of 122,00 viewers in the 25-54 demographic.

Houck was back in May to mock CNN ratings again:

Along with its ongoing ethical problems, a deceptive marketing campaign, and a continued hatred for non-liberal voices, it’s been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for the Jeffrey Zucker-led CNN. And as per the latest Nielsen ratings, CNN has continued to hemorrhage viewers with primetime and entire day total viewership down over 70 percent since January.

Nielsen Media Research has the breakdown and it’s not pretty, no matter how the Zucker Borg would spin it. Since a January high of roughly 798,000 primetime viewers and 530,000 total day viewers in the 25-54 demographic, CNN has fallen off a cliff and into the pit of misery with the network fetching only 229,000 in primetime and 152,000 in total day over the past month.

That, dear NewsBusters readers, would represent a cratering of 71 percent for both metrics. Granted, January saw the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the second Trump impeachment, and the Biden inauguration, but to lose anything by such a large metric wasn’t anything one should brag about.

Houck loves to portray Zucker — who is Jewish — as CNN’s puppetmaster, an anti-Semitic trope. As if Roger Ailes didn’t do the exact same thing at Fox News, which Houck presumably had no problem with at all. Houck actually uses the racially charged “puppetmaster” insult to mock CNN’s ratings again in a June 2 post:

On Monday, one could have diagnosed CNN’s New Day co-host Brianna Keilar deciding to eat cicadas as the show’s “shark jumping” moment, but that would have meant that the show was successful to begin with when, in reality, it’s been a dumpster fire since its April 19 reboot.

Nielsen Media Research has the numbers and, unless you’re puppetmaster Jeff Zucker and his minions with their heads in the sand, they’re not pretty with an audience of under 500,000 total viewers for five weeks in a row (with only the first week being north of that).

Houck’s weird CNN-hating obsession continued on June 29:

When it rains, it pours. And when it comes to ratings at the Jeffrey Zucker-led clown show known as CNN, it’s a monsoon. The second quarter’s ratings came out on Tuesday and the immature, noxious, and repugnant network suffered its worst month in total viewers and the 25-54 demo since June 2019. And that’s not to mention that primetime ratings have tumbled 71 percent in total viewers and 78 percent in the demo since January.

Meanwhile, the Fox News Channel continued to assert its dominance over the competition with its 78th consecutive quarter leading cable news and sixth straight win in all of cable, led in part due to the continued success of shows like The Five, Gutfeld!, and Tucker Carlson Tonight.

Scott Whitlock took tie CNN mocking stick from Houck for a July 23 post: “Apparently, Americans don’t want to watch 80 minutes of CNN’s Don Lemon sucking up to Joe Biden. The July 21 town hall special bombed the ratings, losing not only to Fox News (which would be expected), but even MSNBC.” 

So pathological is the MRC’s hatred of Stelter that it even tried to blame him for tanking the ratings of someone else’s show , as Abigail Streetman did an an Aug. 13 post:

Stephen Colbert is wrong about a lot, but his biggest mistake yet was allowing Clown News Network’s Brian Stelter onto his show this week. The Late Show saw a drastic decrease in viewership during Colbert’s segment with the news anchor who scrambled helplessly in an attempt to defend Chris Cuomo. 

[…]

When Stelter appeared on the show, ratings for his interview revealed it as Colbert’s least watched segment of the night. Wow, shocker! People hate Stelter’s show and it seems like they can’t even stand to watch him on Colbert’s show. 

Demonstrating she’s a Mean Girl with nothing to offer but lame, juvenile insults, Streetman concluded, “The Lame Show will be no more if Stelter ever makes an appearance again.”

Yet the MRC wants to be treated as serious “media researchers.” Go figure.