Fox “News” started all of this news-entertainment stuff. Start your blame with them. We can tie a pretty strong correlation between the rise of FNC and the rise of misinformation in the US populace, with cause and effect relationships well established. CNN’s viewership was falling in favor of FNC and its newly formed counterpart MSNBC. So if you are CNN and you are a non-subsidized entity losing viewers to the commentary competitors? Yeah, you’d probably do commentary too. Again, who started this model? Not CNN. Their choices are market-based. Oh, and I’m not sure where you are getting your numbers from, and I believe you have already been corrected on this previously, but CNN’s viewership has grown in 2020 compared to recent past.
If you want actual news, pursue NPR and forget the entertainment news megaliths. Or subscribe to and read a good newspaper, and not just the Opinion and Sports pages.