Client No. 9’s political ambitions ended with a bang — and now his TV gig has been switched off, too.
CNN axed Eliot Spitzer’s hopelessly low-rated CNN talk show, “In The Arena,” today after months of dwindling viewership and behind-the-scenes tension.
“CNN did to him what he used to do to that hooker,” snickered a TV industry source who once worked on Spitzer’s troubled show, which debuted in October 2010.
With a paltry 595,000 viewers a night since January, Spitzer and was crushed in his 8 p.m. timeslot by Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” which regularly snags nearly 3 million viewers.
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Fox News Channel is a division of News Corp., which also owns The Post.
Even long struggling MSNBC was nearly doubling Spitzer’s lowly audience numbers with left-wing loudmouth, Lawrence O’Donnell.
“We provided diverse and valuable perspectives during the show’s tenure. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at CNN,” Spitzer said in a statement, declining further comment.
The show had originally been called “Parker Spitzer,” — co-hosted by conservative columnist Kathleen Parker — but was renamed “In the Arena” after she was booted from the show this past February.
In announcing its fall TV schedule, CNN said that starting on August 8, Anderson Cooper’s nightly news program AC360 will air in the slot now occupied by Spitzer’s “In the Arena”.
Ken Jautz, executive vice president of CNN/US, said, “There has been improvement for that show but we wanted to see it do more. We wanted to see it do better.”
Spitzer was forced to resign as New York governor in 2008 after hiring a high-priced hooker.
CNN newcomer Piers Morgan and veterans Wolf Blitzer and John King remain on the schedule.