Jim Acosta / CNN
CNN host Jim Acosta may soon be getting a downgrade.
Acosta, formerly CNN’s White House Correspondent and a prominent anti-Trump activist, currently hosts CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta on weekdays at 10 am.
Yet according to ex-CNN reporter Oliver Darcy, who now runs a media focused newsletter called Status News, CNN chief Mark Thompson wants to move Acosta’s show to midnight, when most Americans have already gone to bed.
His report states:
Early Wednesday evening, shortly before I published news of CNN’s looming lineup changes, Jim Acosta received a peculiar telephone call from CNN chief Mark Thompson.
Thompson, I’m told, delivered the veteran journalist a sudden and strange proposal: Move your show to midnight and anchor it until 2am ET.
The offer caught Acosta off guard. He had no reason to believe that his current show would be on the chopping block. In fact, his ratings have historically been some of the network’s strongest, both when he was anchoring on the weekends and now at 10am during the weekdays.
On some days, Acosta even out-rates some of CNN’s prime time programs. So why force him to move his show to the 12am hour, a time slot occupied by virtually zero other hosts in the cable news business?
The move would effectively exile Acosta to the Siberia of television news. He’d be manning down a shift when much of the country is fast asleep and viewership is at its lowest.
Amazing:
CNN is booting Jim Acosta to the midnight hour to bend the knee to President Trump. pic.twitter.com/jNd2sZBiHx
— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) January 17, 2025
Darcy went on to quote an executive who claims the move is an effort to appease the incoming president.
“They want to get rid of Acosta to throw a bone to Trump,” he quoted this executive as saying.
“Midnight is not a serious offer when his ratings are among the best on the network.”
Jim Acosta, one day after he gave a cringe monologue about how important he is to preserving democracy, has now been booted to the midnight-2AM block on CNN.
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) January 17, 2025
The efforts to curry favor with Trump come as CNN and other cable television networks face an existential crisis amid plummeting viewership and audience distrust.
But Acosta is anything if not a survivor.
Back in 2022, there were widespread reports that CNN was planning to fire him from the network because of his political posturing.
However, the demise of former CEO Chris Licht, who himself was fired after attempting to pull the network in a more centrist direction, meant that Acosta managed to hold on to his show and the lucrative salary that comes with it.
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