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If you had to guess which member of Congress would make light of how few Americans are watching television networks like CNN these days, you probably wouldn't have picked Dick Durbin (D), the senior senator from Illinois.
But that's what Durbin did on Dec. 18 when parrying a question from CNN correspondent Manu Raju about whether lawmakers deserve a pay raise.
"People look at the performance of Congress and say, 'Why should we give them more money?'" Raju asked.
"What about the media?" Durbin countered. "Half of your listeners are not there anymore, and you're still getting the same paycheck. What's going on?"
Television executives are also wondering what's going on. The questions are particularly loud at CNN, which has seen a decline in viewership over the past few years, a trend that accelerated after the Nov. 5 election.
Since the election, CNN has seen a 45 percent drop in prime-time viewership, down to only 394,000 total viewers. Overall, this year CNN has had its worst-ever performance among viewers in the key demographic.
In some ways, it's unfair to pick on one particular network. Television viewership is down across the board, as viewers unsubscribe from pricey cable packages and opt either for cheaper streaming packages or free content on YouTube or social media platforms.
MSNBC has also lost a large chunk of a viewership that was likely disappointed by the election results. It started with a larger audience, and it still trails CNN among the 25-to-54 age demographic valued by advertisers across the daily lineup.
But it's hard not to notice CNN's numbers. The last election year, 2020, was the most-watched year in the network's history, with an average of 1.8 million viewers in prime time.
Earlier this month, during the week of Dec. 2, CNN's prime-time lineup averaged just 367,000 viewers. One week earlier, during the generally quiet time around Thanksgiving, CNN averaged 297,000 viewers.
Through executive leadership changes and the strategy shifts, CNN could always count on being the place to turn for big news stories - particularly those involving politics. So it was a dagger to the network when MSNBC attracted more viewers on election night for the first time in the progressive network's history.
"I think a lot of it can be explained by the viewers making a decision that they just don't like what we're doing," said a CNN political journalist who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to comment. "The viewers are pretty smart."
CNN is not conceding defeat. In a press release issued last week trumpeting the network's accomplishments, it pointed out that CNN was still the fourth most-watched cable network throughout the day, averaging 493,000 total viewers. CNN also grew its prime-time audience more than 20 percent compared with 2023.
While most networks still measure success by looking at traditional TV viewership, CNN has indicated that it has largely moved past that metric (even as it still advertises big ratings wins). The network described itself as "the top digital news outlet in the world" this year and said that its digital platforms received an average of 147 million visitors per month, though every network uses its own formula for determining such a number.
The challenge for the network is turning those online visitors into paying customers. To that end, the network launched a paywall in October for $3.99 per month. The network declined to provide data on how many customers the service has. Among news organizations, CNN is a late entrant into the subscription market, and it must also compete with entertainment platforms such as Netflix and Apple TV Plus, which might be a higher priority for cash-strapped customers. CNN is hoping that the subscription service can offset some of the losses from its television business, an aim that had also motivated its short-lived CNN Plus streaming service in the early months of 2022.
"I think that the only sustainable model for any big distributed content company is to have a subscription," said political journalist Chris Cillizza, who worked at the network until he was laid off in 2022. "What's hard for me is: What is CNN known for? CNN is known for breaking news. People turn it on when something big happens. And I think that's a really good brand journalistically, but I just don't know how you make money off it."
A CNN executive, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly, said it's wrong to compare the network's audience to that of Fox News and MSNBC, which are more ideologically oriented. The better comparison, this person said, is to the BBC, which similarly has a large global newsgathering operation and a worldwide audience. ("Ratings be damned," David Zaslav, the boss of CNN's parent company, said last year.)
Ratings do matter, though. A larger audience nets CNN more money from advertisers and makes the channel a more desirable option for cable companies when deciding how much they are willing to pay to include it in their lineup.
"Ratings control everything," said a former senior producer who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly. "It controls the money, it controls the influence, and it's a huge morale issue. You can worry about the future all you want, but right now TV is where the money is and where the reputation is."
Also sapping morale is the specter of layoffs on the horizon. CNN laid off hundreds of employees at the end of 2022 and, officially, the network has declined to address speculation that more cuts await.
"Everyone is concerned, but there is no clear indication when or how significant layoffs will be, or even if they are coming at all," said a senior producer who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment. "Everyone's on edge," the CNN political journalist said.
Theories abound about why the network's ratings have fallen. Some of the decline has been pegged to the network's decision to host a town hall event with Donald Trump in May 2023 that drove away viewers and upset many members of the network's staff.
The man who ran the network at the time, Chris Licht, was replaced last year by former New York Times Co. chief executive Mark Thompson, who initially inspired more confidence from employees even as his ultimate aims for the brand are not entirely clear. (CNN did not make Thompson available for an interview.)
There's also a belief that viewers might have soured on the network's coverage of Trump during the campaign. "It is widely felt at CNN that we didn't meet the mark," the CNN political journalist said.
Across the industry, many observers have questioned whether media companies will take a friendlier approach to covering the former president this time around. While CNN has never indicated a change in its coverage strategy, the network's decision to abstain from fact-checking Trump during the presidential debate it hosted in June 2024 brought new criticism. And Scott Jennings, a Republican political strategist and acolyte of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), has become a ubiquitous presence on the network.
During Licht's tenure, several outspoken journalists were pushed out, leading to questions about whether the network was stifling more left-leaning voices as the network trumpeted an increase in Republicans appearing on the air.
One of the last points that John Harwood made on CNN, before the then-White House correspondent was laid off from the network in September 2022, was that today's Republican Party can no longer be held up as comparable to the Democratic Party. Journalists, he said at the time, are "brought up to believe there's two different political parties with different points of view, and we don't take sides in honest disagreements between them. But that's not what we are talking about. These are not honest disagreements. The Republican Party right now is led by a dishonest demagogue."
While CNN never said whether Harwood's departure was tied to his comments, viewers - and some staffers - took it that way.
"I felt especially as I got older and had more experience and confidence in my judgments, I became more blunt in how I described situations. I felt it was my responsibility, and if you're not willing to exercise that responsibility, what's the point of doing it?" said Harwood, who writes columns for the digital platform founded by former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan. "Other people saw it differently."
Harwood acknowledges that it's a particularly hard time to do journalism. As media companies shrink and journalists leave the field, Trump and his allies have promised to use the courts to take on outlets they take issue with.
Trump sued CNN in 2022 and his White House stripped Jim Acosta of his press pass in 2018. While both actions were overturned by the courts, a newly emboldened Trump could once again turn his attention toward the network. CNN's former leader Jeff Zucker seemed to relish the opportunity to clash with Trump's White House, but employees who spoke with The Post don't think Thompson will take the same approach.
Still, Harwood said, "CNN is comprised of very good, well-motivated people, and I have a lot of respect for my colleagues there. I think they'll do just fine."
Jeremy Barr covers the media industry for The Washington Post.
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