NBC News’ Chuck Todd on Friday fired back at disparaging remarks from CNN’s Chris Cuomo, saying that “nobody” in television wanted to give the Cuomo Prime Time host a job.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Cuomo said he believes that his CNN colleague Jake Tapper is far more influential than Todd. “Anderson Cooper is a hell of a lot bigger than any male anywhere on network television,” Cuomo told the publication in an interview released Wednesday. “I would argue that Chuck Todd ain’t Jake Tapper. Jake Tapper has a much bigger footprint in politics than Chuck Todd does.”
Reacting to Cuomo’s jab, Todd told New York City’s WABC radio station: “I just read [Chris Cuomo’s remarks] as somebody who wanted to defend that fact that nobody in broadcast television wanted to hire him, I guess, or he couldn’t get the job that he wanted. I don’t know what it was, but he was awfully defensive, so he took shots at other people.”
According to TV Newser, Todd’s weekly Sunday program attracted 3.7 million in total viewers in the year’s first quarter, while Tapper‘s Sunday show, State of the Union, had less than one million viewers on average. While Todd and Cuomo’s shows are not in direct competition, the CNN host pulls in just 1.34 million total viewers — during primetime.