So all sensible people agree that it's a good thing for the news to go after the youth demographic. But what happens when one of the most celebrated show ponies of the demo--CNN's Anderson Cooper--looks like he's turning out to be more style than substance (hello, cover of Vanity Fair.) Also in Variety, Michael Learmonth sums it up:
The Anderson Cooper media bandwagon continues to defy logic, and ratings gravity.
It's been nearly a year since Cooper was anointed CNN's youthful savior and given Aaron Brown's primo 10 p.m. timeslot.
Since then, he's been TV news' media darling, most recently gracing the cover of June's Vanity Fair.
But Cooper's stellar media masks an inconvenient truth: He's never achieved the ratings of even his predecessor.
CNN sacked Brown believing Cooper could draw a bigger, younger audaud at 10 p.m. But that hasn't happened. And the VF cover hit just as April ratings showed Coop down 36% in the 25-54 demo, the younger aud he was supposed to attract.
Brown averaged 307,000 young viewers a night last year. This April, Cooper averaged 198,000. In total viewers, Cooper averaged 710,000 compared to 907,000 for Brown last year.
