Gallup drops CNN like a bad habit

Gallup has been teaming with CNN in its polling since 1992, back when CNN still had viewers. Gallup says that it's due in part to CNN's tanked viewership. CNN disagrees. Whom to believe?

CNN's take:

"We want to make it clear that the decision to not renew our polling arrangement had to do with GALLUP's desire to produce their own broadcasts and not about CNN viewership figures. In fact, GALLUP had negotiated with us for four months in an effort to extend the partnership."

Gallup's internal memo by by Jim Clifton, Chairman & CEO of Gallup:

We have chosen "not" to renew our contract with CNN.

We have had a great partnership with CNN but it is not the right alignment for our future. The longtime partnership has been very helpful to The Gallup Poll as it put us "back big" fifteen years ago when our famous Gallup Poll had lost most of its national coverage. Our CNN partnership helped us make a great comeback. We had a great run as we just cut our 4000th segment this week.

The Gallup Poll will go on with more polling than ever, but with new distribution channels.

WHY. 1) CNN has far fewer viewers than it did in the past and we feel that our brand was getting lost and diluted combined with the CNN brand. We have only about 200 thousand viewers during our CNN segments.

Ouch. The Clinton News Network has fallen mightily since its glory days of the first Gulf War, hasn't it? Aw, who cares? Ted Turner has been telling us for years that ratings don't matter. Apparently, Gallup disagrees. Continuing:

2) We are creating our own e-broadcasting programs and we don't want to be married to one broadcast network. We don't want to move to another network like CBS or Fox but rather become our own network. We cannot do this while married to CNN.

Fair enough. However:

3) By dissolving our partnership with CNN we believe that Frank and other Gallup analysts will be seen as more independent so they will be more likely to be invited on a wide variety of television shows rather than primarily linked to CNN. We believe with this new found independence, we will get covered by more broadcast media because we are not the poll of their competitor.

By "independent", do they mean "unbiased"? No way...after all, who could ever think the Clinton News Network is unbiased?

In closing:

We have offered to help CNN find a new polling partner and to be as helpful as we can during this transition.

How about Zogby? Considering every poll he's released since 2000 has been slanted towards Democrats (including his laughable poll right before the election in 2004 showing that Kerry would win 311 electoral votes), conflicts of interest, and his rampant family anti-Semitism and terrorism apologist attitudes, Zogby would be a perfect match for CNN!