• March 29, 2024

Did CNN Hire Millennial YouTuber Genius Casey Neistat to Launch New Media War Against Trump?

 

When it comes to losing the cable news wars CNN has to go straight to the head of the class with honors.  Thanks to WikiLeaks showing the network’s connections to the Clinton Campaign and the DNC along with plummeting audience numbers, it has even fallen behind MSNBC.  Now, according to the Wall Street Journal  CNN (Clinton News Network) has unleashed a Hail Mary play by getting a hired gun in the form of YouTube sensation Casey Neistat. Will they bring out their new Millennial media assault weapon  against a President Trump?

Staying relevant and a major media player is only part of the growing avalanche of problems the liberal network may need to fix, right quick and in a hurry.  The Election Day Hillary Clinton win celebration may have given it the sort of viewer boost needed to escape its very public, insider conspiratorial handshakes with Hillary’s camp among other journalistic misdeeds. But that all evaporated along with Hillary’s presidential chances after the Trump victory.

So why turn to the YouTube genius Neistat?  It is quite simple.  He, is a Millennial and he has six million like-minded followers, which CNN could never attract in a month of Sundays.

“What may be closer to the truth is “CNN brought on Casey Neistat as a move to restore trust in the mainstream media,” according to author and conservative activist, “Grace Elizabeth of Reallygraceful YouTube channel.

Grace Elizabeth is definitely on to something.  The mainstream media network has national polling numbers that are in the toilet.  Millennials now make up the largest voting bloc in America. CNN desperately needs viewers and even as its own liberal base of viewers is abandoning it.

In addition, the old media ways utilized by CNN are outdated and the messaging by the network’s old heads like Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper are very archaic in approach when reaching out to the tens of millions of new voters and viewers.  It is truly simple math.  More Millennial voters 35 and younger rely on social media vehicles and YouTube to get their daily news.

Fox News has probably gone to the head of the line with its news shows using Facebook and Twitter segments in reaching out to and interacting with older and younger viewers. According to the Wrap, “Fox News actually beat MSNBC and CNN combined in primetime and has been the highest-rated cable network during the daypart in nine of the past 10 weeks. Fox News averaged 1.8 million primetime viewers.”

On the other hand, CNN’s constant relentless attacks on Donald Trump during the general presidential campaign drove what little conservative viewers it had away.  As recently as August when Trump was dealing with withering unwarranted anti-Trump attacks from CNN, its 723,000 average viewers placed it at No. 16 among all cable networks, while Fox News remained at the top as the highest-rated network in all of cable primetime during the week ending Aug. 14. Meanwhile MSNBC easily passed CNN for the second straight week in a roll.

Who was watching CNN? In a few words comparatively speaking, nobody. Again, the numbers were not rigged and they do not lie. While MSNBC finished seventh overall in primetime, with an average of over 1 million viewers.

Being anti-Trump in its media attacks worked for CNN if the goal was to find new and unique ways to shed a mountain of viewers.

Welcome to the 21st century CNN.  The News network is now playing catchup when it recently acquired Beme, a successful social media app launched in 2015 by Casey Neistat. The deal was sealed with $25 million dollars.  It was a straight up windfall deal for Neistat who has successfully cultivated his six million YouTube follower base.

The aging media network hopes that the agreement will beef up the news company’s video technology, and more importantly snatch up Neistat’s humungous Millennial digital audience, according to Ars Technica.

Here is a newsflash for the CNN media honchos.  Perhaps you spent $25 million for naught considering that in 2015 CNN chief Jeff Zucker spent major dollars according to Breitbart, to implement new programming, in order to revamp the struggling cable news network.   Based upon a study by the Pew Research Center CNN still lost -9% of its primetime audience last year. Meanwhile MSNBC, no stranger to losing viewers in the tens of thousands still only lost -8% of its primetime viewers.

While in the land of conservatives, Fox News’ audience remaining largely in place by losing only 1% of its viewership with 1.7 million watching nightly, according to the Pew Research study.

Will CNN’s new move to embrace technology lift it up and give it the ability to once again savage conservatives as well as a new Trump presidency?  Honestly, according to Grace Elizabeth, CNN would have saved itself a bundle of cash if it had simply “reported the news instead of injecting its political agenda into every headline.”

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