Former CNN host Chris Cuomo is facing insult after injury as critics call out the low ratings for the debut of his NewsNation show.
Cuomo premiered on Monday (3 October) with initial ratings ending up at 147,000, according to Nielsen.
In the demographic of viewers between the ages of 25 and 54, the 52-year-old anchor managed to attract just 8,000 people to tune in during his 8pm primetime hour.
In the same hour, Tucker Carlson of Fox News, Chris Hayes of MSNBC, and Anderson Cooper at Mr Cuomo’s old employer CNN all received hundreds of thousands and millions more viewers.
Mr Carlson came in at 2.9 million viewers, Mr Hayes hit 1.4 million, and Mr Cooper garnered 814,000. Eric Bolling’s The Balance on Newsmax garnered 151,000 viewers.
Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, comedian Bill Maher, and Clinton Defence Secretary William Cohen all appeared on Mr Cuomo’s initial show.
Mr Cuomo was fired from CNN in December last year after it came to light that he had served as an adviser for his brother Andrew Cuomo while he was battling sexual harassment allegations as governor of New York, forcing him to resign in August of last year.
Mr Cuomo told his meagre audience that he had “learned lessons” from what took place at CNN and that he was humbled by the events.
He said he would “do more to not just play, or even referee, the game”.
Twitter users were quick to mock Mr Cuomo’s slim viewing figures.
“More people watched SpongeBob SquarePants than Chris Cuomo’s new show on Monday night,” Zachary Kussin of the New York Post wrote.
One Twitter user said Mr Cuomo “is forever labeled a portrayer of fake news propaganda!”
“Hopefully Chris Cuomo’s ratings are so low no one will care what he has to say,” another user added.
Another account holder called the host a “benighted moonbat and overall creep” and that he “saw his attempted return to primetime cable news as a cosmic ratings flop that landed him in last place against the competition”.
“And keep in mind, this was opening night. This is when the numbers would be the highest. But it fell flat. On day one. Opening night. The big debut. The grand opening,” the Twitter user added. “Oh, Sparky, this doesn’t look good ... you might want to maybe give small engine repair a shot. Just saying.”
Mr Cuomo is being paid $1m a year at NewsNation, according to the New York Post, a small amount compared to the $6m he was reportedly paid at CNN.
Nielson Media Research also revealed that Mr Cuomo was beaten by CNBC, Fox Business, and HLN.
The Post noted that reruns of Blue Bloods, Paw Patrol, SpongeBob, Seinfeld, Cocomelon, The Office, and Bob’s Burgers all attracted more viewers between the ages of 25 and 54.
Out of Mr Carlson’s 2.9 million viewers, 445,000 were in that category which is most sought after by advertisers. Mr Hayes hit 130,000 in that demographic while Mr Cooper reached 184,000 and Mr Bolling 16,000.
During his first show on Monday, Mr Cuomo said that “we are manipulated by manufactured division that only works to advance the interests of the fringe and the fake. It is only online and how that can be echoed on TV that distorts the reality”.
“The majority is not about left or right, you’re about reasonable. That’s why I’m going to rely not on reading tweets to measure your feedback, I want to go old school here,” he said as he announced a phone number viewers can use to call the programme. “It will be a time for us to discuss our society as adults in the room, not some raging radicals or somebody with keyboard muscles.”
