Among the things people are most worried about right now, “what will happen to cable news anchors when Trump is gone” is probably not very high on the list, but it’s fun to think about.
Really — what will happen to Don Lemon when he’s no longer able to deliver one of his ever-so-devastating, anti-Trump monologues every single night? What is Rachel Maddow without the president’s tax returns to harp about?
The New York Times on Monday reported that executives at both CNN and MSNBC “have summoned star anchors and producers to private meetings in recent weeks, seeking answers to a pressing question: What’s next?”
One unnamed on-air “personality” for MSNBC was actually quoted as telling the paper, “What happens when you don’t need us?”
It’s a delicious irony that in their undying efforts to get the president out of office, cable news anchors may have worked themselves out of a job. What, exactly, is Chris Cuomo going to talk about now? His show was, for a time, somewhat interesting because he often hosted now-former White House adviser Kellyanne Conway to debate the top stories of the day. For now, he still has the pandemic to talk about, which often involves revising his New York governor brother’s failed record, but the vaccine has arrived, and the drama of that story is dying quicker than a nursing home patient in Queens.
The New York Times noted that ratings for MSNBC, the de facto channel of the resistance, nosedived whenever any one of the anticlimactic storylines passed without President Trump being led out of the Oval Office in handcuffs:
MSNBC viewers also tuned out after Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, and they largely skipped Mr. Trump’s State of the Union address in February, which took place when he was assured of an acquittal in a Senate impeachment trial.
Trump only has a little more than a month left in office. CNN and MSNBC better soak it up while it lasts.
