Jake Tapper’s Premiere Episode of ‘United States of Scandal’ Scores Big Ratings Win for CNN
The premiere episode of a new series airing on CNN, United States of Scandal, aired this past weekend and delivered a significant and rare ratings win for the network.
The brainchild of anchor Jake Tapper, who also serves as executive producer, Scandal takes a darkly comedic look at some of the nation’s weirdest political scandals. The first episode focused on former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who served prison time for trying to sell a US senate seat before having his sentence commuted by former President Donald Trump.
The premiere ranked first in cable news among the advertiser-coveted younger demo, drawing 103,000 viewers. That was 40% ahead of Fox News, which aired a replay of their town hall with former Ambassador Nikki Haley and drew 73,000 viewers. Scandal walloped MSNBC by a factor of four (23k). Among the total viewers demographic, CNN delivered 708,000 for the two-hour block, falling short to Fox but landing 49% ahead of MSNBC (with 475,000).
That ratings success can’t just be attributed to a “Blago” obsession of cable news viewers. The next hour of the premiere was a fresh episode featuring the story of former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s affair with an Argentinian woman. It also ranked #1 in cable news and #5 in all of cable among total viewers with 684,000, +11% ahead of Fox News (616,000) and +38% vs. MSNBC (494,000).
The new show provided a much needed oasis of viewers for a network currently languishing in a third-place ratings desert. In Sunday’s prime time, (8p-11p), CNN ranked #1 in cable news among P25-54 with 101k (Fox News: 85k, MSNBC: 26k) and #2 in P2+ with 692k, beating MSNBC (490k), according to Nielsen’s ratings.
Given the show’s brilliant high-brow meets low-brow conceit, it’s no surprise it’s been a ratings win. Viewers get to enjoy the nostalgic schadenfreude and voyeurism of reliving scandals from yesteryear, but in an intellectual way that both deconstructs media coverage and social mores that have already shifted in just over a decade.
“It occurred to me that in our new zeitgeist, many scandals from the recent past were worth reexamining — both with a fresh perspective and also with knowledge of how it all played out,” Tapper told Mediaite. “So often we cover these scandals as the drip drip drips come our way, but now the Shakespearean tales can be told in full.”
It does feel like this show may have cracked a code in CNN programming, threading a needle between serious political discussion (which can sometimes feel far too nutritious) and the sort of confectionary pop gossip many of us delight in consuming but are weary to admit. If you aren’t careful, you might just learn something.
Future episodes will focus on scandalized stars from yesterdecade, like “sock-enthusiast” Eliot Spitzer, proud “Gay-American” Jim McGreevey, and not-so-covert CIA Agent Valerie Plame. The next episode? former VP candidate John Edwards, whose out-of-wedlock baby scandal remains the National Equirer’s high bar of journalistic standards.
Watch the preview clip above via CNN.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
