Jake Tapper takes Wolf Blitzer’s place on CNN for first time since 2004
Jenny Goldsberry
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CNN has tapped out its anchor Wolf Blitzer on election night in exchange for fellow anchor Jake Tapper.
The network announced Thursday that Tapper would join Anderson Cooper for Tuesday election night coverage instead of Blitzer for the first time in nine election cycles since 2004. Blitzer will instead join anchors Don Lemon, Erin Burnett, Poppy Harlow, Alisyn Camerota, and Kaitlan Collins in election coverage.
In 2016, Blitzer led the coverage to a record 13.3 million viewers, which at the time was the highest number ever for any cable network. Fox News would go on to beat that record in 2020, with almost 14 million viewers. CNN came in second that year, with 9.1 million viewers, and quickly recovered the following Saturday, falling in the top spot.
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Meanwhile, Tapper drew dismal ratings during his CNN Tonight show last month as he failed to attract a million viewers and landed in a distant third place behind Fox News and MSNBC, according to cable news ratings. Tapper managed to beat MSNBC’s Alex Wagner in the key 25-54 age demographic, drawing 211,000 viewers versus MSNBC’s 144,000. However, he fell far behind Fox News’s Sean Hannity, who garnered 323,000 viewers in the key demographic.
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The network recently placed Tapper at the 9 p.m. slot from Oct. 10 to Nov. 11, to briefly fill a hole in the 9 p.m. programming hour that had been left by the firing of Chris Cuomo last year.