Dem
51
GOP
49
CNN did not get good reviews for its town hall with Donald Trump, to say the least. So, what are they going to do about that? They are going to hold another town hall with another Republican "presidential candidate." We put that in quotations, because this time it's going to be former VP Mike Pence, whose chances of becoming president are only slightly better than ours are.
The event will be on June 7, and will be moderated by Dana Bash. The good news for Bash is that Pence is not obnoxious like Trump is, and isn't going to bully her and berate her and so forth. The bad news for Bash is that Pence simply will not have dinner with her afterwards. No, wait, that's not the bad news. The actual bad news is that he's less interesting than the fly that landed on him at the vice-presidential debate, and pretty much nobody cares what he has to say.
In short, CNN will be lucky to pull DeSantis-campaign-launch ratings for this event. Not only because Pence is a bore, but also because it appears that viewers are deserting the cable network in droves right now. In the week after the Trump town hall, CNN had its lowest ratings in 8 years, averaging just 429,000 viewers daily. By way of comparison, MSNBC averaged 976,000 and Fox averaged 1,400,000.
In the end, CNN's new CEO Chris Licht is doing exactly what new CEOs always do—shake things up, because they think they have a mandate to shake things up. He's canned a bunch of CNN's established personalities, and he's attempted to rebrand the channel as some sort of centrist outlet. But he's moving way too fast, it would appear. We also think his vision for CNN's coverage is a fantasy. It's not really "fair and balanced," it's faux "fair and balanced," and besides, if that's what viewers really want, the three broadcast networks still have evening news programs. CNN hasn't been golden for a while now, but if Licht isn't careful, he's going to kill the goose that lays the palladium eggs. (Z)