Anderson Cooper Reveals Being Gay – Ratings Ploy? [POLL]

The timing is too suspect for me.

Anderson Cooper coming out to reveal he’s gay, to me at least, has more to do with plummeting ratings at CNN than any personal need he may have to reveal his sexuality.

He came out in an online letter saying that he’d kept his sexual orientation private for personal and professional reasons.

According to this:

“The fact is, I’m gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself and proud,” he wrote in the letter, published by Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Beast.

He said that in a perfect world, it wouldn’t be anyone’s business, but that there is value in “standing up and being counted.”

“I still consider myself a reserved person and I hope this doesn’t mean an end to a small amount of personal space,” he wrote. “But I do think visibility is important, more important than preserving my reporter’s shield of privacy.”

Look at that in light of the recent report that CNN has hit a 20-Year weekday primetime ratings low.

CNN averaged 395,000 viewers in primetime with Anderson Cooper’s AC360 and Piers Morgan Tonight. The full seven days of last week was the third-lowest-rated full week in primetime since March 1997.

Additionally, last Monday to Friday was also the network’s fourth-lowest-rated weekday primetime week among adults 25-54. CNN scored just 111,000 viewers in the demo. CNN’s previous worst weekly weekday primetime among adults 25-54 was May 15-21, 2000, when the network recorded 91,000 viewers among adults 25-54.

Maybe it’s just me, but by revealing his sexuality, do the honchos at CNN really think that they’ll attract a bigger audience with the expectation that he’ll elaborate on his coming out?

Kinda flies in the face of the theme of the HBO series, “The Newsroom!” Doing the news to inform as opposed to doing the news just to get ratings.

The timing is just too suspect!