During the 2020 election, Black Lives Matter protests, and the rise of the coronavirus pandemic, news viewership was higher than ever, and news outlets were benefiting. However, when 2021 hit, news viewership plummeted and big media companies are feeling the squeeze.
Last year, Americans flocked to their televisions in the evenings to watch the major news networks, but the Nielsen company reports that is no longer the case. In 2021, viewership at CNN
Broadcast channels saw a dip in viewership, as well, but weren't as hard hit as the major news networks. ABC's
Digital news reporting also boomed in 2020, and online news sites like The New York Times
These losses are undeniably significant, but news executives with an eye to the future already knew that 2020's media boom wasn't going to last.
"It was entirely predictable," news media analyst Ken Doctor told reporters.
News execs may have known the end was coming, but that doesn't mean they could do anything about it. At cable new networks, 2020 prime time programming came to largely focus on the political unrest of the Trump administration. Once that period ended, the networks were left struggling to hold their audience's interest.
"You become, to some extent, a prisoner of the audience you built," Tom Rosenstiel, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland, told reporters.
For most outlets, that has meant continuing to cover politics despite the dwindling interest. Fox News, in particular, doubled down on its offering of conservative commentary in 2021, receiving the most attention for Tucker Carlson's "Patriot Purge", a Jan. 6 insurrection documentary that alleged the riot is being used as justification to silence Trump supporters. In response to the documentary, two Fox contributors left the network.
CNN is facing an especially tough new year without one of its most popular hosts, Chris Cuomo. Cuomo was fired after it came out that the news personality had assisted his brother, then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, during the Governor's sexual harassment scandal. The network may be hoping to fill that gap with newly hired Chris Wallace, a Fox News veteran of 18 years.
MSNBC is also in for a difficult 2022. Brian Williams has left the network, and Rachel Maddow, MSNBC's most popular personality, is planning on reducing her hours.
One approach that seems to be working for the digital outlets is diversifying their topics rather than continuing to focus solely on politics. After devoting more attention to other topics like consumer recommendations, the Times recently passed 8 million subscribers and is expected to continue growing.
Still, the political obsession of 2020 has had a significant impact on the way we receive the news, and not in a good way. For example, according to Rosenstiel, the lazer focus on ever aspect of the negotiations over President Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" bill may have distracted from other major issues that also deserve viewers' attention.
