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MSNBC had a pretty good night last Tuesday, beating CNN in the election night ratings for the first time. But since then, the network’s ratings have dropped off a cliff. As one dejected viewer explained, she just can’t take any more MSNBC claptrap without some explanation of why they got this so wrong.

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If you’re like me, you haven’t turned on the news since last Tuesday when Donald Trump won the election. Personally, I can’t bear to listen to another minute of wisdom from Joy Reid, my friend Lawrence O’Donnell or the admirable Rachel Maddow. I can’t hear Anderson Cooper, or Abby Phillip. Can’t abide getting the lowdown on NPR or from the New York Times’ Daily Michael Barbaro. Or “The View” ladies. 

I can’t do it. 

I’m not saying I’ll never watch or listen again. But – am I alone here? – my entire body recoils from listening to more claptrap from the same claptrapping apparatus. 

The media got it wrong. Fatally wrong. And the media can’t just pivot into the next cycle of looking around the room and asking, “What just happened?” as if it had nothing to do with it.

The ratings suggest this author is not alone. A lot of dejected Democrats have tuned out MSNBC in the wake of Trump’s win.

On election night, MSNBC scored 6 million viewers compared to CNN’s 5.1 million. But in the days after the election, the network’s total day ratings fell to 808,000 with a 90,000 in the coveted 25-to-54 year old demo, according to Nielsen.

These numbers reflect an average from last Wednesday to Friday. That marks a 54% decrease in the network’s viewership average in the month of October (1.765 million viewers) as well as a 51% decrease in the network’s year-to-date 2024 average (1.655 million viewers). Additionally, on Friday MSNBC saw 636,000 viewers and 61,000 in the demo, making it the network’s lowest rated non-holiday night of the year.

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The question is whether those viewers will return in a few months or if some of these people are gone for good. During Trump’s first term, left-leaning outlets did very well for themselves by focusing on resistance journalism. Will the same thing happen again? One anonymous TV executive told Fox News this time might be different.

A longtime TV news executive who asked to remain anonymous noted that MSNBC’s audience appeared to love to hate Trump during his first administration – but that doesn’t seem to be the case any longer.   

“As its poor post-election night ratings show, MSNBC should not expect a ‘Trump Bump’ this time around. Even liberals are rejecting its condescending tone and the divisive rhetoric of its new standard-bearer, Joy Reid,” the longtime TV news executive said. 

But the same story notes that MSNBC has seen drops like this before. Their viewers are very tied in to the success or failure of certain narratives.

MSNBC has seen viewers jump ship on the heels of news they didn’t like in the past. In 2019, Rachel Maddow’s viewership took a dive when Special Counsel Robert Mueller declared there was no collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia despite the far-left host spending years pushing the Russian collusion narrative.

I think the current decline is probably the same sort of thing. MSNBC viewers tuned in to see Trump lose. They were expecting a party atmosphere at MSNBC. When things didn’t go as they hoped, they switched it off and are now in therapy to deal with what happened. 

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But it won’t last. At some point, the left will go all in on some new line of resistance journalism, some new Trump scandal that they will promise viewers means the end of the Trump. When that happens, MSNBC will once again be at the forefront, pushing the new narrative. And just as quickly, most of the dejected Dems who’ve tuned out will find their way back to the network. That’s my guess how this will go. Give them 2-3 months and they’ll come up with some new version of the Steele dossier.

In the meantime, some on the right have suggested that MSNBC’s big ratings on election night may have been from all of the conservatives tuning in to watch them meltdown. In case you missed it, this video condenses the whole night into 9 minutes of dawning horror for the MSNBC hosts.