CNN's Cooper Blooper?

CNN's strategy to spin Anderson Cooper as the front man of the flagging cable news network is a failure. Cooper's ratings have dived faster than Rachel Maddow & girlfriend on a boozy date night.

With CNN's ancient audience Larry King & the Borscht Belt Circuit would've been a better choice. It's still not too late, CNN!

Page Six: President Obama took office in January, CNN has seen its ratings drop. And one reason has to do with Campbell Brown. The host of "No Bias, No Bull" been on maternity leave for the past month, and in her absence, the show with substitute host Roland Martin has nose-dived. Sources say he has complained the network doesn't promote him enough or book him high-profile guests.

But the biggest disappointment has been the cable channel's big, silver-haired hope, Anderson Cooper.

The former host of "Celebrity Mole" should be happy he signed a multimillion-dollar, multiyear contract with CNN last year during the presidential race, when ratings were at an all-time high. If his contract were up now, Cooper would probably have to settle for far less.

The ratings have plunged for his show, "Anderson Cooper 360," since Obama's inauguration, and the drop in May has been steeper, especially in the coveted 25-54 demographic, where he's down nearly 30 percent from the previous month, averaging less than 250,000 demo viewers.

Tuesday night, Cooper raked in only 615,000 viewers overall. But it wasn't his slowest night ever -- that was May 8, when he clocked in a lousy 499,000 viewers.

A rep for Cooper wouldn't discuss May numbers but said, "Year to date, 'AC360' is having its second-best performance ever with an average of 1.161 million overall viewers and 369,000 in the target demographic. It has an impressive 51 percent advantage over MSNBC in total viewers and a 41 percent lead over MSNBC in the 25-54 demographic."

But insiders say top brass is questioning the CNN strategy of focusing so narrowly on Cooper in all their promos. "They've turned it into the Anderson Cooper network, and it's not working," said one source.

Here's CNN czar Jon Klein crowing about CNN's 2008 "achievements": "...Winning the year at 10PM is remarkable. When you look three years ago, nobody thought that would be possible, when we first launched Anderson at 10. And he has created America's national newscast. That's what it is. It's the news of the day. It's in-depth analysis -- smart people having interesting conversations about the news. And nobody thought that was possible in cable. The presumption had been that the only way to win in cable is to do sensationalism or over-the-top partisan opinion. We have proven otherwise at 10 PM."

Here's Klein in November 2005 - peering into his crystal ball to 2010: "There won’t be anchors. There won’t be people introducing the stories. Consumers won’t have the time or the need for that. They’ll just be getting the news they want, when they want it, in whatever form they want it.”

Isn't this the same guy who pimped Cooper as the news anchor of the future?