MSNBC’s primetime audience has dropped off by 53% since the week before the presidential election, while CNN’s has plummeted by 47%, Fortune reports.
MSNBC had an average of 632,000 primetime viewers in the week ending Nov. 24, compared to 1.34 million in the week ending Nov. 3 ahead of the election. CNN’s audience plunged from 754,000 to 398,000 in that period.
On Friday, Billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk tweeted on X he could buy MSNBC, teasing, “how much does it cost?”
Comcast announced last week it intends to spin off NBCUniversal’s cable television stations into a separate company, although it did not say the networks were up for sale.
Musk has derided MSNBC, calling it the “utter scum of the earth” after the nework pointed out that Nazis held a 1939 rally at Madison Square Garden, where Trump presided over a rally that attracted 200,000 supporters on Oct. 27.
On election night, MSNBC attracted 6 million viewers, surpassing CNN’s 5.1 million.
On Nov. 18 amid MSNBC’s ratings freefall, "Morning Joe" co-anchors Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski paid President-elect Donald Trump a visit to "restart communications." This was after the pair's criticisms of Trump never let up during the election campaign. They even suggested he was a fascist.
But even on the day of the conciliatory visit, between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m., viewership fell 17% from 839,000 to 694,000. Among the 25- to 54-year-old age group, viewing figures fell by 38%.