Geriatric CNN In Ratings Free Fall

“CNN Fails to Stop Fall in Ratings,” the New York Times reports:

CNN continued what has become a precipitous decline in ratings for its prime-time programs in the first quarter of 2010, with its main hosts losing almost half their viewers in a year.

The trend in news ratings for the first three months of this year is all up for one network, the Fox News Channel, which enjoyed its best quarter ever in ratings, and down for both MSNBC and CNN.

CNN had a slightly worse quarter in the fourth quarter of 2009, but the last three months have included compelling news events, like the earthquake in Haiti and the battle over health care, and CNN, which emphasizes its hard news coverage, was apparently unable to benefit.

The losses at CNN continued a pattern in place for much of the last year, as the network trailed its competitors in every prime-time hour. (CNN still easily beats MSNBC in the daytime hours, but those are less lucrative in advertising money, and both networks are far behind Fox News at all hours.)

About the only break from the bad news for CNN was that March was not as bad as February, when the network had its worst single month in its recent history, finishing behind not only Fox News and MSNBC, but also its sister network HLN — and even CNBC, which had Olympics programming that month.

CNN executives have steadfastly said that they will not change their approach to prime-time programs, which are led by hosts not aligned with any partisan point of view.

Think of CNN’s ratings collapse as even more news the network keeps to itself.

Note that that last sentence quoted above isn’t challenged at all by the Gray Lady, despite ample evidence to the contrary, since the Times has long shared CNN’s transnational worldview, and occasionally even has the guts to admit.

In a related item, Apple’s “Think Different” policy continues to recede even further into the distance.

(H/T: OJ)

Update: “Wowee!  When Joy Behar gets more viewers than [Larry King] your flagship talker, you know you’re doing not something but a lot of things wrong.”

Related: “Countdown Tops CNN Again, But [Ratings] Better Without Olbermann.”