People Just Don't Care About News

At least that seems to be the message that has been sent by recent viewership totals of the four major cable news stations -- CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, and HLN (formerly known as Headline News) -- during prime time.

CNN, which is by far the one that relies on actual news coverage (as opposed to talking heads and one-way opinion shows) to drive its audience numbers, came in dead last for the month of October for prime-time programming, reports the New York Times.

However, CNN still has the highest viewership numbers when you look at all the hours in the day, but when it comes to prime-time, the most important hours of the day in terms of advertising revenue, it looks like the American public has a much stronger taste for opinion. FoxNews has made a living on those types of programs (led by the "Papa Bear" himself, Bill O'Reilly, who grabs an average of 880,000 viewers a night), so it should be little surprise that Fox dominates almost every time slot of the prime time schedule.

Opposite 'O Reilly at 8 p.m. is MSNBC's Keith Olberman (the #1 pundit on my list of pundits I'd like to personally strangle) who pulls in less than 300,000 viewers a night, followed by HLN's Nancy Grace with roughly 270,00. In the same time slot, CNN's Campbell Brown gets only 162,000 viewers.

The story is pretty much the same at 7 p.m., with Fox's Shepard Smith grabbing the top spot with 465,000 viewers, while MSNBC's Chris Matthews (179,000), HLN's Jane Velez Mitchell (166,000), and CNN's Lou Dobbs (162,000) barely manage to get that many viewers combined.

The only CNN host not to finish in last place during prime time is the ancient one, Larry King, who managed to finish third at 9 p.m. with 224,00 viewers. That's still well behind Fox's Sean Hannity (659,000) and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow (242,000), but ahead of HLN's Joy Behar (181,000).

Maybe the saddest part for CNN is that their signature show, Anderson Cooper 360, also went to the bottom of the barrel in October. Cooper (who got 211,000 viewers) was beaten by RE-RUNS of Olberman (223,000) and Grace (222,000) during the 10 o'clock hour. Fox's Greta Van Sustern won with 538,000 viewers.

Sadder still - in three of the four time slots, CNN programs were beaten by HLN programs....and HLN is actually owned by CNN. Basically, that's like USA network getting better prime time ratings than NBC.

--