The gamble taken by CNN moving Jake Tapper into the primetime slots for the network seemingly failed to bear fruit as reports expressed that he struggled to even keep up with the timeslot competitors in regards to show ratings.
“As part of a special lineup, Jake agreed to anchor the 9p hour through the midterm elections,” explained a spokesperson for CNN. “At the completion of that schedule, he’ll be returning to his award-winning program The Lead. We will announce post-election plans for that time slot in the coming days.”
It was reported by Semafor that despite the fact that Tapper had officially agreed to only take part in the show out through November 11th, “there had been some speculation that the network’s lead Washington anchor could take over the slot permanently.”
As reported by The Daily Beast, Tapper was possibly being considered as a replacement for this particular time slot, which was originally left vacant by the departure of Chris Cuomo, who was removed from the role by the network throughout the course of an investigation into the alleged help he gave to his brother, then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D), as he attempted to make his way through a scandal about sexual misconduct.
The report claimed that one of the issues that Tapper was dealing with was that he “was not able to trump his time-slot competitors in ratings, often falling far behind competitors Alex Wagner Tonight and Hannity (on MSNBC and Fox News, respectively) in total viewers and alternating with the MSNBC host for second and third place in the key demographic of viewers ages 25 to 54.”
Tapper is now slated to move back to where he was originally set up at the 4 p.m. EST time slot in the wake of his brief stint sitting at the highly competitive 9 p.m. EST time slot.
Chris Cuomo was originally removed from his role when, as the network carried out its internal investigation, a woman stepped forward and directly accused him of sexual misconduct that included a “young temporary ABC employee hoping for a full-time job,” and former ABC News executive producer Shelley Ross, as reported by The New York Times.
Ross, who would later end up as an executive producer at CBS News, made the claim that while at a 2005 going-away part, Cuomo came up “and greeted me with a strong bear hug while lowering one hand to firmly grab and squeeze the cheek of my buttock.”
“‘I can do this now that you’re no longer my boss,’ he said to me with a kind of cocky arrogance,” stated Ross in an op-ed put out by the New York Times. “‘No you can’t,’ I said, pushing him off me at the chest while stepping back, revealing my husband, who had seen the entire episode at close range. We quickly left.”
