Couldn't Happen to a More Deserving Guy- Piers Morgan....

CNN Hits Lowest Primetime Demo Rating at 9 PM In 15 Years

By Alex Weprin on May 16, 2012 5:37 PM


Last night was a typical, boring Tuesday, with little earth-shattering news to drive TV viewers to cable news. It was also May sweeps, with the season finale of “NCIS: LA,” “America’s Got Talent” on NBC and “Dancing With the Stars” on ABC drawing an astonishing 39 million viewers between them at 9 PM.

Unfortunately for CNN, “Piers Morgan Tonight” was the apparent victim of the busy night, drawing only 39,000 viewers 25-54 at 9 PM. To say those ratings are anomalous would be something of an understatement. That is the lowest 9 PM weekday demo rating for CNN since at least 1997. While the ratings were an outlier, it was a fairly normal edition of “PMT,” with Morgan hosting. Guests included Jane Lynch and “The man with the golden voice” Ted Williams.

“PMT” drew 284,000 total viewers, which was down from a typical weekday, but not a record-breaking low.

“PMT”s lead-in and lead-out, “AC360,” drew around 90,000 demo viewers at both 8 and 10 PM, also down from a typical