What Goes Up Must Come Down…

Throwing a wrench into CNN’s recent carefully choreographed pitch to advertisers about having a plan to retain viewers, The New York Times’ Bill Carter writes about CNN’s previously lofty ratings dropping the network back into 3rd place in primetime…

In a repetition of a pattern that has become familiar for CNN, the surge of interest in breaking news that helped drive up its audiences has faded – and so have CNN’s ratings.

The cable news network’s prime-time lineup has not capitalized much on the attention its news coverage gained, returning for the most part to a steady finish in third place behind Fox News and MSNBC. The decline was illustrated by ratings from Wednesday night, when CNN lost across the board, finishing third in each of the three hours from 8 to 11 p.m.

Even Anderson Cooper, who saw his ratings and reputation revived by his widely praised reporting first from Egypt during the political rebellion and then from Japan after the earthquake and tsunami, dropped behind both Greta Van Susteren on Fox and Ed Schultz on MSNBC on Wednesday night.