The Young Turks is the largest online news show in the world. We have just crossed the Million/Billion mark. We have over one million subscribers and one billion views on our YouTube channel. There are only 25 non-music channels in the Million/Billion Club. We are the only news channel in the group.
The average age of CNN's audience is 68. Isn't that amazing? The average CNN viewer is retired. When you go over to Fox News, it's even worse. The average O'Reilly viewer is 71! Only 12 percent of his audience is in the coveted 25-54 age bracket (this is the demo that advertisers find appealing, so everyone on cable news cares more about this number than anything else). This so-called big shot is basically doing his show out of a senior citizens center. 71!!!
Even the youngest skewing show on MSNBC, All In with Chris Hayes, only has about 33 percent of its audience in the 25-54 demo. Everyone else does worse or much, much worse. Cable news is literally ancient.
So, I am greatly amused when CNN keeps rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. Ohhh, they brought in Chris Cuomo for the morning show! Whoop dee doo! What is this 1985, where a so-called star will help your morning show and the rest of your lineup will take-off from there? This is so unbelievably antiquated.
First, almost no one in TV news is a star. TV has made everyone so vanilla it's nearly impossible to tell one anchor apart from another. Quick, tell me the difference between John King and Wolf Blitzer? You said "the beard," right?
Second, the idea of a doing a standard-bearer morning show that's basically so general that it's supposed to appeal to all of America is a concept that is a couple of decades too late. Now, all of media is an ocean. When it was a pool and the audience had limited options, Katie Couric's winning smile could make a difference. You would swim toward that end of the pool since there were only three channels to choose from. Now, you're winning smile is lost in the middle of an ocean and no one sees it. You actually have to stand out, not do the same old boring crap.
It is inconceivable that CNN's morning show or any other show could be anything but horribly boring. Why? Because they won't let anyone take risks. Everyone's drowning in vanilla. If you're a nail that sticks out, you get the hammer. They perceive their brand to be super safe. Well, super safe is super boring.
So, the new CNN morning show debuted to 95,000 viewers in the 25-54 "money" demo. Ouch. To give you a sense of perspective, TYT Network gets 50 million views a month on YouTube alone. That's well over 1.5 million views a day. But let's be fair and just consider the main show -- The Young Turks. That gets about 30 million views a month. That's one million views a day. What percentage of our viewers are in the 25-54 demo? 61 percent!
So, that's 610,000 younger viewers a day for our show and 95,000 for them. But it really doesn't matter what CNN show you put us up against, we crush them all. And the morning show's numbers were for its first day. Usually programs go down in numbers after the initial first day interest. On the other hand, the numbers for our show are climbing every single day. Have you heard that viewers are migrating over to online media? Well, they're already here.
Half of CNN's audience is above the age of 68. Do you know what percentage of our audience is above 65 years old? 3 percent. Which side of that equation would you rather be on?
Now, can you begin to see why I feel bad for CNN?
Yes, right now they are worth billions of dollars and we are not. But the handwriting is on the wall. Their ship is too big, too costly and too slow. They couldn't turn that ship around even if they wanted to, and besides, they've already hit the iceberg. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. If you're in this new media ocean, whose boat would you rather be in?
It's only a matter of time. CNN -- see you, wouldn't wanna be you. Literally.