It sounds like Chris Cuomo’s “Keeping up with the Cuomos” segments with brother Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) have backfired rather spectacularly.
The Daily Mail reports that the CNN anchor’s ratings have dropped nearly 50% since early April:
CNN host Chris Cuomo’s ratings have plunged 49 percent in the two months since he announced he’d contracted coronavirus, data from Nielsen Media Research shows.Since the week of March 30, Cuomo has dropped from first in his 9pm time slot among cable news hosts to bottom of the barrel, last week averaging just 440,000 daily viewers in the age demographic prized by advertisers.Cuomo’s stunning ratings nosedive came after interviews with his brother, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in lighthearted segments that were widely panned as ratings stunts amid the coronavirus pandemic.Though all cable news saw something of a drop-off in viewership in May, as viewers seemingly grew weary of the pandemic coverage, Chris Cuomo’s decline was sharper than his time slot competitors, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
Here’s what the numbers look like:
As his ratings have declined, Chris Cuomo has frequently had his brother on for unserious interviews in the middle of a pandemic, including one recent interview where Q-tip props were used and jokes about Gov. Cuomo’s nose were made.
For those who missed that segment, here’s the video:
Also in the midst of his ratings decline, Chris Cuomo got caught in a whopper after staging a dramatic basement emergence video just days after he broke quarantine during a visit to his under-construction East Hampton home with family members, where he got into a verbal altercation with a bicyclist who called him out for breaking quarantine after being diagnosed with the Wuhan Coronavirus:
It’s Chris Cuomo’s lack of hard questions for his brother on serious issues like the nursing home scandal that have landed him in the most hot water with critics, as the New York Post notes:
While all the cable news shows have seen ratings drop due to COVID exhaustion, Cuomo has particularly grated with his “frequently silly and un-substantive interviews” with his older brother — in which they have fought over who their mother loved more; Andrew’s “double barrel shotgun” nose, and Andrew’s “single status.”The segments have been panned as ratings stunts done for laughs while thousands of New Yorkers died of the coronavirus.
The Atlantic, an outlet typically friendly to the left, even blasted CNN and Chris Cuomo in a piece published last week:
While Andrew Cuomo was benefiting from heart-string-tugging segments on CNN, his state was struggling. Like Trump, Cuomo had promised that COVID-19 wouldn’t be as bad here as elsewhere; like Trump, he didn’t have to wait long to be disproved.Experts said that New York City was always likely to become a center of the virus because of its constant flow of people, size, and density, but as The New York Times reported, “initial efforts by New York officials to stem the outbreak were hampered by their own confused guidance, unheeded warnings, delayed decisions and political infighting.”Promised contact tracing never materialized. Shutdowns came late, and over the governor’s hesitations. Journalism that truly aims to restore trust in media would hold Andrew Cuomo to account for these missteps.
The headline of that Atlantic piece? “CNN Is Picking Ratings Over Ethics.”
Too bad for CNN that they have utterly failed when it comes to both ratings and ethics.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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