JOHN ELLIS: The Collapse of CNN. “In a little over twenty years, CNN devolved from the most important television news organization in the world to another channel to skim through or skip over. But don’t take my word for it. Look at the numbers. In the second quarter of this year, CNN’s primetime ratings basically collapsed. The overall numbers were down horribly and the key demos were down horribly. It was so bad that in primetime, CNN was losing to CNN Headline News, which is a little bit like the Yankees losing to their farm team in Columbus Scranton, every night.”