CNN announced on Wednesday that veteran anchor Wolf Blitzer will host a new show, The Newscast, for WarnerMedia’s upcoming streaming service CNN+. The move is just the latest in a string of hiring announcements for the streaming platform, but perhaps one of the most notable as it may also signal bigger changes ahead for CNN – which is currently facing serious ratings woes.
Blitzer, who joined CNN in 1990 as the network’s military-affairs correspondent at the Pentagon, has had an incredible career and anchored the network during many of the key events of the past decades – most recently holding down CNN coverage of the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
At his height on CNN, Blitzer was anchoring a staggering three hours a day. In January of 2021 CNN announced The Situation Room would be cut to just one hour as Jake Tapper’s program was expanded.
In recent months, Blitzer’s numbers, along with CNN’s audience as a whole, have been trailing far behind Fox News and MSNBC in the cable news ratings race.
Right-leaning publications like FoxNews.com and the Daily Mail have delighted in recent days at jabbing CNN over their plummeting year-over-year ratings. Last week, the Daily Mail ran a headline blaring: “Tuning out! Viewership at scandal-plagued CNN plummets by as much as 90% from last year in both overall audience and in advertiser-coveted 25-to-54 demographic.”
While year-over-year comparisons certainly need to be understood in context, January of 2021 saw an unprecedented peak in viewership for all the networks, and CNN’s drop in raw numbers is jarring and greater than its competitors. CNN ended 2021 plagued with scandal, having had to fire its highest-rated prime time host Chris Cuomo. The question now resounding through the media world is how will the network react to recover its audience.
For Blitzer, whose time on-screen has already greatly diminished, cynics might see a move into streaming as his swan song. But others may see this as CNNs’ most trusted brand giving gravitas and
CNN rejected the premise of this column — vigorously — in a statement to Mediaite:
The very premise of this piece is nonsensical and ill-informed. Equating the launch of a CNN+ program with the end of a distinguished television career is offensively stupid. Anderson Cooper, Poppy Harlow, Kate Bolduan, Sara Sidner and others will host programs on CNN+ in addition to their CNN linear TV roles. Wolf Blitzer is no different. This is hit-job hackery, not educated opinion. Mediaite should be ashamed for publishing this garbage.
Blitzer’s new show, which begins in April, is being billed by CNN+ as an “old-school nostalgic approach featuring original reporting from around the world, investigations, and consumer focused stories that matter help put the latest headlines in perspective.”
It sounds like the kind of program that is meant to both attract any viewers loyal to Blitzer to CNN+ and honor his legacy as one of the most storied broadcasters in cable news history.
CNN+, which has also hired veteran Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, enters the fray alongside NBC News NOW and others that already launched streaming services, like Fox Nation, as cable news tries to adjust to an ever-changing digital news landscape.
While the push into streaming is meant to save the cable networks from becoming irrelevant as news consumption changes and interest declines among younger demographics, for Blitzer it may end up signaling something else. Or maybe, as is the unpredictable