Paul Farhi of The Washington Post writes about the early ratings of CNBC’s evening news show featuring new hire Shepard Smith.
Farhi writes, “Since his debut in late September, ‘The News With Shepard Smith’ has averaged a modest 280,000 viewers each weeknight at 7 p.m. That’s twice as many viewers as the ‘Shark Tank’ reruns it replaced — but a fraction of the 2 million-plus viewers that CNN, Fox and MSNBC each attract at the same hour. ‘The News’ even finishes behind CNBC’s main rival, Fox Business Network, which airs a rerun of Trump-loyalist commentator Lou Dobbs’s program. The hot new cable news show at the moment isn’t Smith’s handsomely produced hour; it’s one hosted by another former Fox denizen, Greg Kelly, on the conservative Newsmax channel that proffers baseless claims about how the election was ‘stolen’ from Trump.
“This during a year when an explosion of news has bolstered the ratings for many other traditional newscasts. So if it isn’t attracting a crowd right now, when would it?
“Smith, 56, says he’s been so focused on producing his show that he hasn’t spent much time thinking about how many people are watching it.”
Read more here.
