Anderson Cooper is leading the cable news pack with his continuing coverage of BP’s Gulf oil spill, offers Brian Stelter. Like he did during Hurricane Katrina, Cooper has spent more time reporting from the Gulf than any other news reporter — for which he’s been rewarded with stonewalling from BP execs whom he wants to interview. And thanks to Cooper practicing journalism, his ratings have continued to slide.
[photo via]
Baxter
Anderson Cooper should go back to being a reality show host.
greybat
Maybe he should keep a cougarish blonde in tow, like the do on Fox? T.V.Newsviewers seem to like those.
She could even give a comment once in a while.
greybat
Maybe he should keep a cougarish blonde in tow, like they do on Fox? T.V.Newsviewers seem to like those.
She could even give a comment once in a while.
Cal
Anderson’s reporting in the Gulf has been some of the best. Regardless of the ratings, I hope he keeps going in on BP.
AlanReeser
Andy’s ratings are behind a REPEAT of MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann. A REPEAT. If you are losing to a REPEAT, there is something really, really wrong.
Hey Andy ~ Come out, come out, wherever you are. It may help!
Billy
Hey, is that his boyfriend Ben under the tent?
Harry
Anderson is taking tonight off….again. Summer hours??? He doesn’t seem very concerned about his ratings if he can’t work for an entire week straight.
Chris
Actually the guy who AC is looking at in the photo kind of resembles his bf, but it was probably just a guy on his crew or some local he was interviewing.
SmartVac
Doesn’t he do a lot of 60 minutes segs? I’m guessing he’s going to jump over full time. Poor AC. If he added a gossip segment to his show, I bet it’d up the ratings. đ
Harry
@Chris, it is the guy behind Anderson wearing the backpack looking down that perhaps looks like his boyfriend.
rrr
This is a false story. That irritates me. This may be a website but it is presents itself as a news source and it has some responsibilities to its readers and to the truth.
“Continued to slide” implies an uninterrupted downward progression. That’s not true. The 360 BP location coverage had the top ratings of any non-FOX cable news show in the prized 25-54 demographic. Queerty also cherry picked Weds June 16th for a link to try to make its case Cooper’s ratings are doing badly. The correct thing to do would have been to look at trend not one night when there was a ratings dip. At the very least you should have acknowledged that the other night’s ratings available for in that same week do not support your premise that 360’s ratings are poor during this coverage. On June 14th 360’s live show had the strongest ratings in CNN’s prime time line up and was second in its time slot behind forever first place FOX. On June 15th 360’s live show was again second by a good margin in its slot.
Obviously level of viewership is not going to be sustainable forever as a show continues to do the location coverage on a story, but the ratings are fine at present and were high earlier on. The same was true with Katrina, Cooper’s interest and commitment long outlasted some of the audience’s.
But don’t let facts get in the way of your trying to prematurely bury a gay man’s career, Queerty. You’d obviously like to create a narrative of total failure for this one guy among all the many glass closeted men and women in news. Funny, I haven’t seen you covering any of the real past ratings struggles of Good Morning America and its two glass closeted hosts. I haven’t seen articles here about how Shep Smith’s Fox Report has low ratings compared to other afternoon and evening FOX shows and it loses some of his lead in audience from Bret Baier.
It doesn’t make sense to pick out Cooper’s show for ratings attacks either when the rest of CNN’s primetime line up including 360’s lead in show have weak ratings. FOX and MSNBC have filled their prime time line ups with showy entertaining commentators and positioned themselves as the left wing or right wing network, and that brings in higher numbers that traditional news. 360 exists in a larger context.
Kendall
I can’t watch news from a reporter i don’t trust and i don’t trust anderson. it always feels like he is hiding something.
Keith
@Kendall: he’s not lying about being gay, but isn’t forthright, not that he has to be, though I guess he lives openly. Maybe that is what you think he is hiding.
Most of the stuff he does is because they are an ego-booster. Cover them to get the recognition, then on to the next. Perhaps all these anchors are like this, he’s no different.
mk
@Kendall: I don’t hear people saying that about guys like Don Lemon.
We have just been made hyperconscious of the state of Anderson Cooper’s public sexuality status because of the Cooper obsession of Queerty and other gay run blogs and gay magazines.
Don can interview the makers of Outrage one day and John Amaechi the next while not giving any hint of his own gayness without any attention being drawn to it. Anderson can’t even report on stories that have nothing to do with gayness without the gay media bringing in his sexuality, scraping for any omens of his TV demise, and now making up a fake story about his ratings.
Martin
Does Bill Hemmer get this same obsession? (re the gay? is he gay?).
rrr
@ Keith
Most of the stuff he does is because they are an ego-booster.
It’s his job to cover major stories like BP or Haiti and he has a background in location work.
Cover them to get the recognition, then on to the next.
When he really invests in a story he sticks with it a lot longer than normal. Eventually he moves on because on TV you have to, you can’t just keep reporting on the same story forever with the same intensity when the audience’s interest has deserted it and other news stories have come up.
alan brickman
Anderson is probably asking that guy in the photo for more “in depth” coverage….
Michael
I used to watch AC360 but I stopped watching after his “BP is refusing to talk to us” routine. The 1st time I saw it I kinda chuckled but after he aired the same thing night after night I thought it was kinda pathetic.
CNN’s ratings is going down and it just happens to coincide with them pandering to the right.
Michael
It’s no wonder his ratings are slipping. The past several years have been non-stop disaster TV, and first on the scene, last to turn out the lights, is AC. Nothing against him, but despite all the messes, there is life beyond the morass.
Michael
@Michael: Gotta agree with that. He seems to think that people should jump at the chance to be publicly ridiculed on world-wide TV. What an honor!
Cody
Mmmmm… Id watch Anderson Cooper ANY where he goes. **Oh No, Anderson is covered in oil** No worries, Ill help scrub him clean đ
Cal
This isn’t contributing much to the discussion here, but this linked website has some recent photos of Anderson and Ben (hopefully the link works). The two guys in the photo accompanying this article don’t really resemble Ben, so I don’t think either of them is him. The real Ben looks like he has a mohawk or a “fade” hairdo.
http://photolink.photoshelter.com/search?I_DSC=anderson+cooper&I_USER_ID=U00009x9ucaX.IWQ&I_DSC_AND=t&_ACT=search
hephaestion
I wish Anderson Cooper would take over Queerty and restore its journalistic integrity.
Cam
@rrr:
You may not want to lie in the age of internet. The latest ratings, for his show I could find, were from Thursday June 17th. So 4 days ago…
10 PM
On the Record w/ Gretaâ1,803,000 viewers
Countdown w/ K. Olbermann â 558,000 viewers
Anderson Cooper 360 â 529,000 viewers
And don’t try defending him as “A Gay Man”. After the way he soft peddled the George Rekers Expose most likely due to his own fear of the closet door opening, I just can’t trust him. Straight reporters went after that story much more hard-core.