Morning Joe Loses 26% Of Its Young Viewers As MSNBC Audience Rejects Scarborough

MSNBC’s Morning Joe has seen 26% of its younger audience leave as MSNBC viewers have turned off the Republican talking points of Joe Scarborough in favor of other options.

According to TVNewser, over a quarter of their former audience has abandoned MSNBC’s Morning Joe, “Several shows saw significant individual declines, including “Morning Joe,” which was down -26% in the demo, while CNN’s “New Day” grew among total viewers and posted a second-place finish over MSNBC in the demo.”

What the above paragraph means in plain English is that younger viewers (age 18-49), who are the same people that MSNBC thought they could capture, are soundly rejecting Morning Joe and Joe Scarborough. Morning Joe’s audience is profiling similar to Fox News’s audience in terms of age. Morning Joe did beat CNN’s New Day seven out of twelve months in 2014, but CNN gained steam over the second half of the year. It would be surprising in Morning Joe beat CNN in 2015.

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Cable news itself looks to be dying a slow death. All three cable networks lost viewers in 2014. Fox News lost 4% of their total viewers. CNN lost 13% if their viewers, and MSNBC dropped by 26%. MSNBC’s decision to try to hire younger talent may have backfired as CNN beat MSNBC in primetime with younger viewers.

All of the cable news networks need younger viewers to supplement their aging base audience. Younger MSNBC viewers have little interest in Joe Scarborough’s conservative morning show, but as has become the norm at the “Lean Forward” network, management is not listening to what viewers are demanding. There is a large audience on the left that has no morning options. These viewers are the people who are turning off corporate cable news networks that are to varying degrees conservative messaging machines.

The younger generation of cable news viewers has spoken. They don’t want to spend their mornings with Joe.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association