Debut Of ‘CNN This Morning’ Draws Just 387,000 Viewers, Down From The Show It Replaced, ‘CNN New Day’

Tuesday’s debut of CNN’s revamped morning show, CNN This Morning, slumped to a third-place finish in the cable news ratings, drawing an average audience of 387,000 viewers between 6 and 9 a.m. ET, according to ratings data compiled by Nielsen. That means the months-in-the-making new show—backed by significant promotion—actually did worse on its first morning than the show it replaced, the ratings-starved New Day, which in its last year averaged 414,000 viewers.

CNN This Morning trailed Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends, which had a total audience Tuesday of 1.452 million viewers, and MSNBC’s Morning Joe, which delivered a total audience of 793,000 viewers. Among viewers 25-54, the key demographic valued by advertisers, Fox & Friends was first with 236,000 viewers, followed by Morning Joe (114,000 viewers) and CNN This Morning (71,000 viewers).

While morning shows see their ratings rise and fall as viewers dip in and leave, CNN’s fresh-from-the-showroom buzz didn’t climb out of third place at any point in the morning, trailing MSNBC by a significant margin each hour from 6 to 9 a.m., both among total viewers and in the key demo, where CNN has recently found some ratings success.

CNN chairman and CEO Chris Licht made revamping the network’s sagging morning ratings a priority, moving Don Lemon from prime time to host the new show alongside Kaitlin Collins and Poppy Harlow. “There is no stronger combination of talent than Don, Poppy and Kaitlan to deliver on our promise of a game-changing morning news program,” said Licht said when the new show was announced back in September. “They are each uniquely intelligent, reliable and compelling; together they have a rare and palpable chemistry. Combined with CNN’s resources and global newsgathering capabilities, we will offer a smart, bold and refreshing way to start the day.”

Will CNN stick with the new show and give it time to grow? Licht helped launch Morning Joe at MSNBC and knows well how difficult it can be to convince viewers to change their habits. One sign the network will push CNN This Morning hard is its format: a showcase of the network’s traditional strength, reporting. Instead of putting panels of partisans on set to argue about the news, the new show featured correspondents reporting the news, delivering on Licht’s promise to pull CNN back toward the journalism that defined it for decades—and produced solid ratings with breaking news coverage.