No, that’s not a typo in the headline. According to Nielsen Media Research, CNN’s Reliable Sources and host Brian Stelter were absolutely pulverized Sunday in the ratings fight by FNC’s MediaBuzz with Howard Kurtz, losing by 106 percent in total viewers.
On Sunday, Stelter’s Fox hatefest garnered 852,000 total viewers and 168,000 in the 25-54 group. In contrast, Kurtz’s show had 1.751 million and 324,000 in the two respective metrics, making for that 106 percent advantage in the first group and a similarly-astounding 93 percent lead in the second.
NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham wrote that, in said episode, Stelter and his panelists hilariously claimed that outlets like Breitbart, the Daily Caller, and Fox News were “political tools” whereas the “mainstream press” has no such allegiance to anything other than the truth.
Rewinding back one week to September 13, MediaBuzz held its own over Reliable Sources by margins of 63 percent in total viewers and 54 percent in ages 25-54.
The margins were similar when scoring August 23 (67 percent and 30 percent) and August 30 (64 percent and 31 percent) when Stelter urged TV news outlets to break-in to their coverage of the RNC due to what he claimed would feature a “stream of lying” and declaring Trump to be a fascist (just like, you know, Adolf Hitler), respectively.
To be fair to Brian (since he isn’t to the people he hates), Stelter beat out MediaBuzz on September 6 by 19 percent in the 25-54 demo (280,000 to 228,000), but was still outdrawn in total viewers by 26 percent.
That day, Stelter argued that merely “writ[ing] a letter to the publisher” in context of The Atlantic’s anonymously-sourced article about President Trump would be seen as a threat.
However, CNN applied the word “Special” to that Labor Day weekend Reliable Sources, which meant it avoided being calculated into the show’s overall ratings.
Perhaps Stelter and Zuckerville should have done that because, due to that ratings cheat (which shows often use for when there’s a fill-in host or show taking place on or near a major holiday), Stelter’s last month has been rather embarrassing.
Since Stelter’s book-hawking August 23 episode, Nielsen pegged MediaBuzz with a 70 percent lead in total viewers and 43 percent in the 25-54 demo.
