THE DAILY NEWSLETTER - TUESDAY, JANUARY 4, 2021

Media Winners & Losers

MEDIA WINNER:
Andy Cohen & Anderson Cooper

CNN’s rowdy New Year’s Eve special in Times Square, hosted by Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen, was the most-watched event on cable news as America rang in 2022.

The show, as usual, generated plenty of highlights (and continues to deliver).

CNN’s special, which started at 8 p.m., drew 2.12 million total viewers and 746k in the advertiser coveted 25-54 demo.

That demo number is nearly triple of what Fox News saw, and 16 times (!) what MSNBC drew.

Special programming on Fox News averaged 1.76 million total viewers and 260k in demo. 

MSNBC, which is not much of a destination for NYE viewing, drew just 476k total viewers and 45k in the demo.

Here’s a full breakdown of the New Years Eve cable news ratings by show.

As for the three cable news networks overall, here are the total day averages in total viewers and the 25-54 category.

  • Total viewers:
    • CNN: 983,000
    • Fox News: 1.45 million
    • MSNBC: 475,000
  • 25-54 Demo:
    • CNN: 287,000
    • Fox News: 228,000
    • MSNBC: 48,000

Here are the prime time averages in total viewers and the 25-54 demo.

  • Total viewers:
    • CNN: 2.12 million
    • Fox News: 1.67 million
    • MSNBC: 530,000
  • 25-54 Demo:
    • CNN: 746,000
    • Fox News: 225,000
    • MSNBC: 174,000

Read the full article here, from Mediaite+!

MEDIA LOSER:
Newsweek's Josh Hammer

Newsweek’s Opinion Editor Josh Hammer posted a series of tweets agreeing with the claim that the U.S. needs “fewer Asians."

Hammer responded to a tweet calling out Law Professor Amy Wax, saying she was “praising the superiority of ‘European’ culture, now argues that the US needs ‘fewer Asians’ and we need to be asking ‘how many’ Asians are too many.”

“Amy Wax has bigger cojones than 99.9% of the GOP.” Hammer wrote in a since-deleted tweet.

He followed up on that with a thread attempting to explain his defense of Wax and his belief that the GOP needs to embrace “restrictionist” immigration policy.

"The specifics of what Amy Wax says in any specific moment of any specific podcast are less important than her immense Overton window-shifting value in slowly helping to retire the long-standing GOP consultant class pablum of 'illegal immigration bad; legal immigration good!'" he tweeted.

"There is no issue on which the base and the establishment are more at loggerheads than legal immigration. The base is restrictionist, and has been for decades now," said Hammer. 

The controversial professor has argued against the idea that all cultures are equal and was profiled in the New Yorker under the headline, “A Penn Law Professor Wants to Make America White Again.”

Stephen Gutowski, founder of the Reload, called out Hammer’s comments. “What a pathetic cop-out,” Gutowski wrote. “I’d like to know if he thinks the US should have fewer Asians. That’s literally what Amy Wax said.”

Gutowsi's reaction was far from isolated. Despite the delete, Hammer was hammered for hours, both for the initial remark, and for refusing to disavow it.

NEW: Albany DA Says Ex-Gov Andrew Cuomo
Won't Be Prosecuted for Groping Charge

The A-Block

‘Evil Propaganda’

The TODAY Show featured a segment Tuesday morning that was a simple explainer on what are the most effective sorts of masks one can wear to prevent getting infected by Covid-19 and how best to wear them. It was a timely segment as the number of daily Covid-19 cases just reached an all-time high, and many morning show viewers surely are interested in how best to avoid the potentially deadly contagion.

What TODAY Show producers and reporter Vicky Nguyen probably didn’t account for was just how OUTRAGED the pretty anodyne segment would make many conservative thought leaders, as identified on Twitter by John Whitehouse.

Ben Shapiro called the segment “insane,” while Adam Baldwin said it was “evil propaganda.” Conservative talk show host Buck Sexton derided it by saying “clinging to masks is a mental health issue” while former Trump official Ric Grennell asked “who is the executive producer of the who pushing this non-science.”

It was... something.


WATCHNBC News Correspondent Trapped for 10 HOURS on Snowy 1-95 Reports from Stuck Inside His Car on Morning Joe


In Other News...

Ana Navarro Says Donald Trump Was Illegitimately Elected in 2016 During WILD Rant on The View

Charlamagne tha God Blasts Fox News Guest For 'Politicizing' Vasectomies: 'Republicans Have Never Gotten Clipped?'

Janet Jackson Breaks Silence on Michael Jackson's Child Abuse Allegations

POLL: Half of Republicans See Democrats as Enemies Who Will DESTROY Their Way of Life — And Even More Liberals Say Same of Republicans

Must See Clip

Jaw-Dropping Denial and Nuttery

CNN correspondent Donie O’Sullivan confronted a passel of Trump supporters over their denial and wingnuttery as the anniversary of the January 6 Capitol insurrection approaches.

O’Sullivan has carved out a niche for himself by wading into the waters of right-wing delusion like some sort of journalistic hillbilly handfishin’ practitioner, and he plucked a few doozies out of their holes in his most recent report.

On Monday night’s edition of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360,  O'Sullivan brought a parade of Trump supporters blurting out jaw-dropping statements of denial and nutty conspiracy theories.

It's pretty breathtaking.

Links We Like

No Way To Grow Up: American Children Are Starting 2022 In Crisis
- David Leonhardt, The New York Times
Ahead of His Time: Remembering The Visionary Sen. Harry Reid
- Murshed Zaheed, American Prospect
She Asked the Army to Investigate a Rape Trial. They Fired Her
- Seth Harp, Rolling Stone
We Know Exactly Who the Capitol Rioters Were
Aymann Ismail, Slate
Reading this online? Why not get it in your inbox? Sign up for the Mediaite Live from the Greenroom Newsletter today!
Twitter Twitter
Facebook Facebook
Instagram Instagram
Visit Mediaite Visit Mediaite
Copyright © 2021 Mediaite LLC All rights reserved.

Write to us:  [email protected]

Problems with these e-mails? Update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.