US news networks saw a dramatic drop in viewership in 2021, despite being the main form of evening programming for Americans in 2020, according to Nielsen data.
The drop in viewership this year was larger among cable news networks, according to the Associated Press, which cited Nielsen data.
The data showed a 38 percent drop in weekday prime-time viewership for CNN, 34 percent drop for Fox News Channel, and 25 percent drop for MSNBC.
Meanwhile, viewership at ABC’s “World News Tonight” and “CBS Evening News” dropped by 12 percent each, while it had a drop of 14 percent for NBC’s “Nightly News.”
This is not surprising for experts who had already anticipated the drop. “It was entirely predictable,” said news media analyst Ken Doctor.
University of Maryland professor Tom Rosenstiel said the current model used by many cable news networks is not appealing to many audiences.
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They built their recent models on political combat or pitting one political party or politician against another.
“You become, to some extent, a prisoner of the audience you built,” said Rosenstiel.
“People to some degree have focused inward,” Rosenstiel said. “They’re getting the news that they need but it’s not as much news as it was a year ago.”
During the presidency of Donald Trump, many news outlets saw their viewership and subscriber base increase while covering the frenetic pace of activity by the federal government.
Now that Joe Biden is president, news outlets have seen what some have described as a “post-Trump slump” in audience engagement.
Citing Comscore data, the AP also said that the number of unique visitors at The Washington Post’s website fell by 44 percent in November in comparison to the previous year, around the time of the 2020 election, while The New York Times saw a drop of 34 percent.
