The fledgling cable-TV community that has employed Chris Cuomo to host a primetime present this fall is already asking staffers to advertise the disgraced anchor — and a few aren’t completely satisfied about it.
Cuomo, whose previous 9 p.m. CNN present “Cuomo Prime Time” averaged 1 million nightly viewers in its closing yr, is being heralded by the brass at NewsNation as a savior for the community — a message that’s frightening grumbling among the many rank and file, sources advised On the Cash.
“That is going to be like SiriusXM — with Chris as a substitute of Howard Stern,” one supply griped.
Staff at NewsNation — launched lower than two years in the past, with rankings which might be a tiny fraction of CNN’s — are likewise bristling over a current request to plug Cuomo’s new present on the backside of their electronic mail signatures, sources advised On the Cash.
“It’s all about Chris,” mentioned one other apoplectic supply. “Are you able to consider they’re asking staff to all plug Chris and never their very own reveals?”
The Cuomo electronic mail signature — which reveals the 52-year-old speaking head towards a blue background with the plug “coming this fall to NewsNation” — stands in distinction to the community’s typical electronic mail signatures which depict all of its prime anchors, sources mentioned.
Staffers for anchor Ashleigh Banfield — who hosts the ten p.m. hour and who was amongst NewsNation’s first massive hires with a resume that boasted stints at CNN and MSNBC — are significantly peeved, in response to insiders.
“She was meant to be the Rachel Maddow of the community,” in response to the supply, evaluating Banfield to the MSNBC star. “Now right here comes Chris, the massive swinging d–okay.”
As reported by The Put up, the Nexstar-owned community is constructing a model new studio for Cuomo at its Midtown places of work at 220 E. forty second St. by the United Nations. Banfield, in contrast, is capturing her present from a studio close to her Connecticut residence, whereas her manufacturing workers works from NewsNation’s Chicago headquarters, in response to a supply.
The supply added that whereas NewsNation has a studio put aside for her in its Midtown places of work, Banfield has “refused” to make use of it as a result of it’s “too small.”
Banfield advised The Put up she was completely satisfied to work from “wherever they need me to broadcast.”
An individual near the scenario advised The Put up that there are not any plans to maneuver Banfield to a renovated area within the Midtown workplace. Accordingly, some on workforce Banfield, greatest recognized for her authorized evaluation, now really feel like they’re enjoying second fiddle — with some boycotting the Cuomo promo altogether, a supply with information mentioned.
Additional triggering staffers is information that Dan Abrams, the community’s 9 p.m. host, who already broadcasts from the Large Apple, can even get a studio in the identical constructing as Cuomo this fall.
Banfield tried quash any perceived beef.
“I can’t anticipate Chris Cuomo to boost the profile of this community,” she advised On The Cash. “We labored collectively at ABC and CNN and we have been good mates.”
Cuomo, a self-professed buddy of Abrams, introduced on the host’s present that he was becoming a member of NewsNation this fall in what critics have likened to a wedding of comfort. The Put up broke the information that Cuomo will likely be taking the 8 p.m. slot beginning Oct. 3.
“Chris Cuomo is solely the most recent addition to NewsNation’s increasing roster of proficient, skilled journalists,” a rep for NewsNation mentioned. ” As we’ve got since our launch two years in the past, we ask our workers to assist promote all of our reveals, particularly the brand new ones, as a lot as attainable, in as some ways as attainable.”
NewsNation execs hope Cuomo — who they obtained at a steep low cost — can juice the fledgling community’s anemic rankings. In the meantime the scandal-scarred Cuomo, fired from CNN final yr over his position in advising his older brother, then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, will get an opportunity to return to the air.
Abrams, for his half, has slammed the media for taking photographs on the community on his present, telling viewers that the “politicized media needs NewsNation to fail” amid stories of the rent and the community’s low rankings.
“Within the media panorama stuffed with extremists, a community that offers voice to a average viewpoint is an outlier, or a disrupter, who represents an existentialist risk to a media which, for therefore lengthy, has profited off of driving us to the fringes,” Abrams mentioned.
Throughout a current inside assembly, NewsNation’s president of stories programming Michael Corn performed a mash-up of Abrams’ greatest zingers to rally staffers, however he didn’t tackle the rankings. Regardless of any bruised egos forward of Cuomo’s arrival, staff typically have been hoping the anchor would have the ability to juice the puny rankings.
NewsNation is averaging a paltry 50,000 whole viewers in primetime and solely 8,000 of these viewers come from the all-important 25-54 age demographic coveted by advertisers.
By comparability, CNN, which is in final place among the many Large 3 cable information networks, has 15 instances as many primetime viewers as NewsNation, averaging 762,000 whole viewers and 190,00 viewers aged 25-54.
No. 1 Fox Information will get 2.4 million in primetime and 375,000 viewers within the demo. MSNBC pulls 1.2 million whole primetime viewers and 136,000 in the important thing demo.
On Monday, NewsNation added a trio of hires, bringing on a former CNBC contributor and Fox Enterprise producer Jake Novak as deputy managing editor, Ali Bradley, a information anchor for K2TV in Casper, Wyo., as a southwest correspondent, and Haley Turner, a former Fox Information senior producer as senior producer for “On Stability with Leland Vittert.”
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