After nearly 20 years of working with Fox News, the network’s weekend host, Chris Wallace went on to sign a contract with its key competitor, CNN in 2021.
His new show and the platform that it was hosted on, what CNN called “a revolutionary streaming service,” was forced to shut down just weeks into an official launch and after spending millions of dollars on a streaming service, an attempt to compete with Fox News’ mega-successful “Fox Nation.”
After months of turbulence following the failure of CNN+, Chris Wallace finally went on to host his first show on cable News, “Who’s Talking To Chris Wallace” Sunday night and the show tanked receiving a much smaller audience than the network had anticipated.
Data from Nielsen Media Research reveals that Wallace’s new show brought in 401,000 live viewers on his first episode, which was a whopping 29 percent less than the network’s 2022 average for the same 7 pm EST time slot.
Getting into the key demographics of this small 401,000 viewers gets worse for Wallace and his friends at CNN. Only 44,000 viewers from this small audience were from the all-important advertiser critical 25-54 age group which is a whopping 36% low from the network’s 2022 average.
CNN is getting really desperate to get eyes on the show hosted by a former Fox News grifter and has now partnered with HBO Max releasing the full show days ahead on HBO Max rather than its regularly scheduled weekend cable news programming. The network claims that the show features only “the best of the interviews” with celebrity guests.
A CNN source told The New York Post that CNN’s partnership with HBO Max is an attempt to fix the less than desirable viewership on its new show.
“Live domestic TV viewers represent only a fraction of its intended audience,” the source told the post. The source also claimed that the show “doesn’t follow a typical linear distribution model so its success won’t be determined like one.”
Wallace’s Sunday night show on Fox News comparatively received much better views than CNN. With each episode averaging slightly over one million viewers which were significantly lower than the rest of the Fox News lineup, but still far better than CNN.
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