CNN Charging $1.5 Million To Advertise During The Presidential Debate

The 2020 Presidential debates were tough to watch. The world was in a terrible place and we had to listen to two elderly white men bicker at each other. It had never been more obvious. Yes, one of these older folks is considerably worse than the other. Regardless, if I wanted to watch two old white men bicker about the state of things, I’d go to a Mets game. It was a depressing display with monumental stakes. There was an underlying sense of dread while two men who won’t face the most devastating effects of climate change talked over each other for an hour and a half. And it’s about to happen again!

Joe Biden and Donald Trump are set to debate each other on June 27th. It’s a repeat of their 2020 showdowns, but this time, they’ll both be four years older. An election cycle that has already felt interminable will be heightened with a “Fight Night” type feel. Both sides will spend weeks replaying clips and over-examining pauses, scoffs, and burns to claim that their candidate had the best showing. Policy will be an afterthought, overshadowed by claims of who got in the best personal jab. It will be a madhouse that will generate ratings for all the wrong reasons. That’s what CNN is counting on.

Semafor is reporting that CNN will include several ad breaks in the June 27th debate. If it wasn’t going to feel too long to begin with, now it will feature commercials. Ad packages will be split up into two tiers. The top tier will cost $1.5 million. It will include on-air billboards, a countdown clock, and space on MAX, just to really drive home the idea that whoever purchases these ads will be buying deck furniture on a sinking ship. In this case, the ship just happens to be America. Though CNN isn’t far behind.

The website also notes that CNN has fallen on hard times. While many cable news networks are facing dips in viewership, CNN is worse off than the others, according to the Semafor piece. The network’s ratings have fallen to “lows not seen in decades.” A source at the network blames cord-cutting, among other things, for the lack of viewership. “Do we want to get more competitive in cable TV and by strengthening our schedules? Yes, we do,” the source said. “But the rate at which people have been and probably will continue to cut the cord and not look at cable TV at all is a far, far greater strategic threat than the finer points of competition between individual cable channels.”

CNN’s dire situation, coupled with charging almost three times as much for ads as they did during the last presidential debate, paints a bleak picture. The network’s most successful recent live event occurred a year ago when they presented a Town Hall with Trump. The main upside to this story is that Semafor claims, “Americans have largely tuned out the presidential race this election cycle.” Ideally, this debate is a bust, and if CNN hosts another in four years, they’ll have to take their prices down. If they even exist, that is.

Cable news networks taking a hit feels like a net positive for humanity. There is no benefit to their existence. They do more harm than good. People who are the same age as the two current candidates will tie themselves into knots, explaining why watching the same coverage over and over for days at a time keeps them informed. It doesn’t. It keeps them hooked. It makes them feel right. The sooner it goes away, the better.