CNN has been hyping the return of Crossfire for months, but given the ratings the first week, it seems the public wasn't buying it.
Quite the contrary, numbers reported by The Wrap Monday show this not so new venture by the supposedly most trusted name in news is a bomb of epic proportions.
To begin with, total viewers for Crossfire were down 14 percent from the previous week when Wolf Blitzer's two hour The Situation Room aired in the same time slot. The decline was 7 percent in the all important demographic of people aged 25 to 54.
So 30 minutes of S.E. Cupp, Stephanie Cutter, Van Jones, and Newt Gingrich couldn't compete with 2 hours of Wolf Blitzer.
Wow!
Adding insult to injury, the ratings declined after the Monday premiere with Friday showing a 47 percent drop in total viewers from the first episode and 40 percent in the demo.
Again, wow!
So what's the likely problem?
Seems pretty obvious: lack of star power!
On the left, other than hardcore politicos, who knows who Stephanie Cutter and Van Jones are?
Even worse, if you did, knowing that they both worked for the Obama administration, why would you care what they had to say given their obvious inability to be impartial about anything?
As for S.E. Cupp, this writer is a big fan. However, she, too, is hardly a household name.
Twelve months on the little-watched MSNBC gabfest The Cycle doesn't make one a star, although it's seems likely somewhere in the future she will be.
Which brings us to Gingrich, who I'm also a fan of, but I'm a conservative with a great deal of respect for his intellect and knowledge of politics.
For the rest of the nation, Newt is just another old white guy with right-wing views.
That's not to castigate old white guys with right-wing views. That's how my kids describe me.
But in an era where old white guys with right-wing views are pummeled by the left and their media minions 24/7, what made CNN executive Jeff Zucker think casting one as a co-host of a new talk show going up against totally unknown liberals would be a success?
Add it all up, and this show seemed doomed to fail from the start.
Readers are advised to view my follow-up "Conservatives Should Hope CNN’s New Crossfire Succeeds."
