Slip sliding away

I'm so old I remember when Ted Turner invented CNN. It was a great news source once. Now, not so much. Somewhere along the way they lost sight of their original mission and it's showing in their ratings.

Coming off its least-watched month in primetime in 20 years in May, CNN has taken another big ratings blow: The cable news network has registered to its lowest-rated quarter in primetime since 1991.

I watched CNN pretty much 24/7 in the early days. It's been a really long time since I didn't click right past it. The point of no return for me was when they embedded with the Koch brothers' Tea Party Express and when they followed up by hiring Erick Erickson as an "analyst" they lost me for good. The lesson being, no one is going to be able to bleed Fox viewers from their home base and pandering to that demographic will destroy your brand and lose the viewers that built your brand in the first place.

On a slightly related note, I mostly ignore polls, but couldn't ignore this one showing the odious Eric Cantor is losing his base as well, or at least he's looking vulnerable. It seems even in safe conservative districts, women are beginning to notice the culture warriors of the GOP are entirely too interested in legislating what they do with their lady parts. Polling shows they're not too happy with it.

Chances are Cantor will still keep his seat, but this poll make cause him to dial back a bit on the panty sniffing. It may even scare him enough to browbeat his Tea Party cohorts into getting their noses out of our lady bits. For the short term anyway.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]