HOWARD SCHULTZ'S CNN TOWN HALL RATINGS WERE MUCH LOWER THAN KAMALA HARRIS'S

Howard Schultz on CNN was a ratings flop.

CNN's town hall Tuesday night with former Starbucks CEO and possible independent presidential candidate Howard Schultz finished third in the cable news ratings race, according to early numbers from Nielsen Media Research.

Both Fox News and MSNBC drew more viewers.

Laura Ingraham's "The Ingraham Angle" won the time slot with 2.47 million total viewers, while MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell drew 2.21 million. CNN attracted 1.04 million viewers during the time slot.

In the 25-54 age group sought out by advertisers, Ingraham's show had 464,000 viewers, compared to "The Last Word" on MSNBC with 366,000 viewers. CNN's town hall finished third with 351,000.

So Schultz drew barely over a million viewers, and 351,000 in the 25-54 age range.

By contrast, how did Kamala Harris do last month?

California Sen. Kamala Harris drew a bigger-than-usual audience to CNN Monday night for her first town hall appearance as a presidential candidate.

The hourlong program, featuring Harris answering questions from a studio audience, drew nearly 2 million viewers — 75 percent above CNN's four-week average in the 10 o'clock hour. The news channel says the audience of 1.95 million was the largest for a single-candidate town hall in CNN history.

Harris' appearance, a week after she announced she'll run for president in the 2020 Democratic primary, also carried CNN to the top spot in the key news demographic of adults 25-54. The town hall averaged 712,000 viewers in the demo, well ahead of its cable-news competition on MSNBC (404,000) and Fox News (395,000).

So Harris's audience was approximately double the size of Schultz's. Genius move by CNN to give him the second town hall and not Warren, Booker, or someone else with an actual following.