• Mediaweek, Monday, November 28, 2005 11:30 AM

Say what you want about CNN's Anderson Cooper, the current shooting star of TV news, the fact of the matter is that he's produced only mixed results for his network since last month when his nightly show, AC 360, was given a prime slot in the nightly schedule. Eleven days into its new time slot, reports Mediaweek, the show "averaged 568,000 total viewers, with the balance tuning in for the program's first hour (685,000). Cooper's average audience is down 19 percent relative to [Aaron] Brown's final week" at CNN. Moreover, Cooper isn't retaining Larry King's lead-in (losing 32 percent of King's audience). On the plus side, CNN is touting Cooper's popularity with the 25-54 demo, where he has posted significantly improved numbers in his first several weeks, particularly against Fox News Channel. Anderson Cooper clearly is no Larry King, and for CNN, which values younger viewers as much as anyone, that news is probably perceived as a good thing.

Read the whole story at Mediaweek »