Don Lemon’s New Morning Show Debuts, Immediately Bombs In Ratings

We’re not quite sure what new CNN boss Chris Licht was thinking when he finally had his shot to revamp the network and try to save some of its dying credibility. 

On one hand, he made the savvy move of canning torturous anchors and useless shows, like Brian Stelter’s “Reliable Sources”. On the other hand, he also “rearranged deck chairs” in keeping Don Lemon on the network, but moving him to morning programming.

Recall, when the decision took place, we wrote about how Lemon had an on-air meltdown about being demoted from his primetime spot to compete with other liberal morning show drivel, including “Morning Joe”.

And Lemon can’t even do that.

A new report from the NY Post claims that Lemon’s new show, hosted by him and  Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins “bombed” in its debut. “CNN This Morning” posted just 387,000 viewers, the report says. This compares to “Morning Joe”, which posted 793,000 viewers in the same time period. 

Fox & Friends topped the same spot with 1.5 million viewers.

As the NY Post reported, “No show across CNN, MSNBC and Fox News ranked lower than Lemon’s program on Tuesday.”

To add insult to injury, CNN This Morning even failed to reach the 404,000 average viewers of “New Day”, the show it replaced. 

CNN offered up the following excuse to The Post: “There’s not a morning show on television today that was a ratings success on day one. Reporting on ratings failures or successes of an entirely new program after a single day is absurd and cheap.”

 “That’s not the way this works. We’re entirely focused on developing a smart, compelling and relevant show that’s already having outsized impact. Anyone pushing an alternative narrative knows what a threat this talent lineup is,” they concluded.