Featuring high-profile interviews with President Joe Biden and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, CNN anchor Jake Tapper made his primetime debut on Tuesday night. Yet despite the marquee lineup, the 9 p.m. ET broadcast still only managed a third-place finish in its cable-news time slot. According to Nielsen, CNN Tonight with Jake Tapper averaged 854,000 total viewers and 211,000 in the key 25-54 advertising demographic. While Tapper did best Alex Wagner Tonight in the demo, that MSNBC program—currently dealing with its own ratings woes—nearly doubled its CNN competitor in total audience, drawing 1.586 million viewers. Fox News’ Hannity, meanwhile, dominated the hour, pulling in 2.629 million viewers overall and 323,000 in the key demo. CNN announced last month that Tapper would move to primetime through the midterms—a move that could become permanent if Tapper connects with viewers, especially since CNN hasn’t had a permanent host at 9 p.m. since the network fired Chris Cuomo last year. Compared to the same Tuesday night last year, which Cuomo anchored, Tapper was down just two percent in total viewers but up four percent in the 25-54 demographic. Additionally, Tapper saw big gains over CNN’s 9 p.m. hour from the previous week, which only nabbed a total audience of 690,000 and 186,000 demo viewers. (On the other hand, of course, none of those other CNN broadcasts featured a much-anticipated sit-down with the current president.)