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Debut of ‘New Day’ Fails to Increase CNN’s Morning Audience

Debut of ‘New Day’ Fails to Increase CNN’s Morning Audience

CNN introduced its new morning program, “New Day,” with a bit of fanfare Monday, and won mostly positive reviews for the revamping of the format and the new cast of anchors.

But the new show went little noticed by the viewing public. In fact, CNN fared worse on Monday that it has in recent months with the programming the new show replaced.

On its first day, “New Day” attracted 247,000 total viewers, and 95,000 among the group that news advertisers pay to reach, viewers ages 25 to 54.

In both cases, that left “New Day” trailing its cable news competitors. “New Day” also still trailed its sister network, HLN, in the 25-54 group, though it did edge ahead into third â€" instead of fourth â€" place among the cable morning shows in total viewers. (Still, those numbers are minuscule compared with what the traditional network morning shows like “Today” and “Good Morning America” attract.)

The audiences for Monday on the cable competition during the same time period, 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., were: “Fox and Friends” on the Fox News Channel, 1.06 million total viewers, with 262,000 in the 25-54 category; “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, 355,000 total viewers, 132,000 in the advertiser-preferred group; HLN’s morning show had 215,000 total viewers, with 121,000 in the 25-54 audience.

News shows sometimes start out with a flourish because of a surge of publicity, but then slide until they can (or cannot) build up a following. “New Day” apparently will have to settle in for a long haul, at its outset trailing what CNN has been averaging in those hours.

For the second quarter of 2013, CNN averaged 371,000 viewers in those hours, and 147,000 viewers in the 25-54 group. Of course, those numbers include the inflated ratings for heavy news stories during the last several months, which always stoke the CNN results.

A week ago, however, CNN had more viewers on what was a more typical Monday: 265,000. But “New Day” did improve this week over the performance in the 25-54 category, growing to 95,000 from 80,000.