Jake Tapper is learning the hard way that media hype doesn’t always translate to ratings. Despite a month-long publicity blitz for his new book, May marked Tapper’s worst ratings performance in nearly a decade.
You know that Tapper co-wrote “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” with Alex Thompson of Axios, and it’s gotten all sorts of publicity from the same legacy media outlets that helped cover up Biden’s cognitive decline in the first place. On paper, it had all the ingredients for a breakout success: scandal, media buzz, and a CNN host pretending to be a whistleblower after being a pawn in the cover-up.
I’ve written a few books myself, and I’ve never had the kind of publicity Tapper has gotten from this book. He’s been on podcasts and talk shows, and, of course, CNN’s own round-the-clock promotion, for whatever that’s worth. You couldn’t flip on the network without seeing Tapper hawking the book as if it weren’t full of stories that conservative media had been talking about for four years already.
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Yet despite all that publicity, despite all the noise, Tapper’s show on CNN hit rock bottom in May, drawing the smallest audience he’s had in years. Maybe the American public is simply tired of lectures from the very people who helped run cover for Biden in the first place.
Fox News Digital has more:
"The Lead with Jake Tapper" averaged 525,000 total viewers from April 28 through May 25, shedding 25% of CNN’s audience in its timeslot from the same period last year in the process.
By comparison, Fox News offerings "The Five" and "Special Report with Bret Baier" averaged 3.3 million viewers from April 28 through May 25, trouncing Tapper.
MSNBC also beat Tapper among total viewers, as programming on the progressive network averaged a little over one million viewers in the timeslot. As a result, Tapper settled for only 11% of the cable news audience share, while MSNBC managed 21% and Fox News commanded 68% during the timeframe.
It was Tapper’s lowest-rated month since August 2015.
"The Lead with Jake Tapper" is also down from last year among the advertiser-coveted demographic of adults aged 25-54. Tapper’s newscast averaged only 95,000 viewers among the critical demo from April 28 through May 25, for a 15% drop.
Perhaps Jake Tapper can find a shred of comfort in knowing he wasn’t alone in the ratings gutter. “The Lead with Jake Tapper” wasn’t the only CNN program to flop; May turned out to be CNN’s second-worst month ever in the coveted demo, both in total day and primetime. That’s not just a Tapper problem — it’s a full-blown network crisis.
It's fully deserved, too. Maybe if they didn’t spend the previous four years lying about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, they’d be in a better position today.
"The award-winning program The Lead with Jake Tapper reaches broad global audiences across CNN, CNN International and Max’s streaming platform. No single metric can capture the true reach and impact of a program driving the national conversation," a CNN spokesperson insisted.
Yeah, go with that.
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