Donald Trump is destroying the GOP, pluralism, and all adult standards of common decency. And cable’s profits are soaring.
.. In short, cable news is a gerontocratic kingdom where Fox News serves as king, with more than twice the audience of CNN and triple that of MSNBC
.. There is another interesting wrinkle to the Trump Effect: The viewership growth wasn’t evenly spread across networks. One network, CNN, gobbled up the majority of new viewers.
.. in the first quarter of 2016, CNN’s primetime ratings grew 159 percent annually... CNN has been a major driver of Trump’s news presence, an amount of time one analysis valued at equivalent to $3 billion of advertising. But his ubiquity on CNN has been a mutually profitable arrangement.