"SINKING ANCHORS ANDERSON COOPER AND ROLAND MARTIN HOBBLE CNN" --That's the headline in The New York Post today. Admittedly, the tab awkwardly mixes a metaphor, but it has the details of the decline and fall of La Anderson. And as for Roland Martin, well, who ever knew who he was, anyway? As it looks, the choice of Martin must be a plot by Campbell Brown to make her own meager ratings look good by comparison, while she is off on maternity leave. At the rate things are going for CNN at 8 pm, Jon Klein & Co. will be eager to have her back--so she can be a relatively close third, as opposed to a distant third, behind Fox and MSNBC.
Here's the NYP:
Since President Obama took office in January, CNN has seen its ratings drop. And one reason has to do with Campbell Brown. The host of "No Bias, No Bull" has been on maternity leave for the past month, and in her absence, the show with substitute host Roland Martin has nose-dived. Sources say he has complained the network doesn't promote him enough or book him high-profile guests.
But the biggest disappointment has been the cable channel's big, silver-haired hope, Anderson Cooper.
The former host of "Celebrity Mole" should be happy he signed a multimillion-dollar, multiyear contract with CNN last year during the presidential race, when ratings were at an all-time high. If his contract were up now, Cooper would probably have to settle for far less.
The ratings have plunged for his show, "Anderson Cooper 360," since Obama's inauguration, and the drop in May has been steeper, especially in the coveted 25-54 demographic, where he's down nearly 30 percent from the previous month, averaging less than 250,000 demo viewers.
