CNN Drops to Last Place

October 26, 2009, 1:42 Pm

CNN Drops to Last Place Among Cable News Networks

By BILL CARTER

Paul Hawthorne/Getty ImagesCNN’s Anderson Cooper

CNN, which invented the cable news network more than two

decades ago, will hit a new competitive low with its prime-time programs in October, finishing fourth – and last – among the cable news networks with the audience that all the networks rely on for their advertising.

The official monthly numbers will be finalized at 4 p.m. Monday and will include results from Friday. CNN executives conceded that will not change the competitive standing for the month. CNN will

still be last in prime time.

That means CNN’s programs were behind not only Fox News and MSNBC, but even its own sister network HLN (formerly Headline News.) Three of its four

shows between 7 and 11 p.m. finished fourth and last among the cable news networks. That was the first time CNN had finished that poorly with its prime-time shows.

Report: New York Losing Population to Other States

ALBANY _ New York suffered the largest loss of residents to other states in the nation from 2000 to 2008, with more than 1.5 million people leaving, a report Monday found.

The report, commissioned by the conservative Empire Center for New York State Policy, found 8 percent of New York's population at the start of the decade has left to other states. Thirty percent of them moved to Florida; another third moved to neighboring New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

The shift also resulted in a 13 percent drop in the average incomes of New Yorkers, as households with higher incomes left the state, the report found. The report suggested the reason for the migration is the state's high taxes and high cost of living. The majority of the people who left came from New York City, which lost 1.1 million people to other states and other places in New York.

While most left the state, some moved north within New York. Dutchess, Orange and Ulster counties, for example, had population increases, as did the Albany area.

Wendell Cox, an Illinois-based researcher who led the study, said New York, particularly in the New York City area, had seen home prices over the last decade greatly outpace incomes compared to other states. Also, New York is among the highest taxed states in the country, he said.