FOX News Channel’s The Five marked their 2nd highest rated show with viewers 25-54 since launch on 7/11/11 drawing 481,000 and 1.8 million in total viewers. According to Nielsen, The Five – a program nearly six months old beat four networks combined in the demo: CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and HLN. See attached for excel sheet.

The Five’s highest rated show was on 11/8/11, but the show only aired for 21 minutes due to Herman Cain’s PC.

It’s time to take another compelling journey into the realm of monthly cable news ratings through the oh-so-rosy lens of the network’s publicists. What can you expect? Cleverly-crafted bullet points from the MSNBC, CNN, and imaginary* Fox News number-crunchers, all doing their best to somehow make Nielsen’s month-end ratings look as if, yes, everybody won!

Fox News continued to ride the wave of successful debate ratings with Monday night’s GOP event from South Carolina. Moderated by South Carolina native Bret Baier, the debate — the first held since the field whittled down to five major candidates — pulled in 5.5 million total viewers, with 1.6 million coming from the all-important 25-to-54 year-old demographic.

During a panel discussion on Morning Joe Tuesday, Last Word host Lawrence O’Donnell was asked about Newt Gingrich going after Mitt Romney for his Bain Capital connection. O’Donnell suggested he should check the New York Times to see what they were saying. He promptly lifted up the paper, held it up to pretend he was reading it, and showed off a bright yellow back-page ad that touted MSNBC’s ratings win over CNN.

The never-ending coverage of the Iowa Caucus results reached well into “wee hour” territory on early Wednesday morning, inadvertently creating some of the most enjoyable election coverage in recent memory. Ed Schultz praised Rick Santorum on MSNBC (and Al Sharpton referred to Mitt Romney as “Willard”), while CNN’s cast of hundreds got loopy late, and made two unwitting stars out of Iowans Edith Pfeffer and Carolyn Talett.

It’s time to take another compelling journey into the realm of year-end cable news ratings through the oh-so-rosy lens of the network’s publicists. What can you expect? Cleverly-crafted bullet points from the MSNBC, CNN, HLN, and imaginary* Fox News number-crunchers, all doing their best to somehow make Nielsen’s year-end ratings look as if, yes, everybody won!

It’s amazing, in the world of ratings, how many different conclusions can be drawn from the same set of numbers. Someone can be winning a nightly battle in “total viewers,” but lose in the 25-54 year-old demo. An anchor may be up a certain percentage from a year ago, but be down compared to the previous month. There are so many opportunities for twisted language and clever turns of phrases that when networks come out with their year-end ratings press releases, there’s room enough for everyone to just say wonderful things about their own shows, and not have to bring up those on rival networks.

Friday nights are, as we’ve noted before, incredibly weird. But, on the day after a big debate, with people nursing GOP hangovers and the political scene otherwise quiet and essentially shut down for the holidays, its doubly weird. Mix in the fact that the weekend before both Christmas and Hanukkah is likely full of parties, shopping, and other distractions pulling us away from our beloved cable news shows, and things get even shakier. So it’s wise to take these exceptionally-low numbers — it cannot be stressed enough — with a grain of salt.

Fox News was almost universally lauded for their production of the Republican debate on Thursday night, and the amount of people who tuned in made it doubly enjoyable for the cable news network: 6.7 million viewers tuned in to watch the debate, with 1.9 million of them coming from the 25-54 year old demo. The only debate this year to beat these numbers was ABC’s last week, which pulled 7.6 million overall and 2.1 million in the demo. Keep in mind that ABC is in about 17 million more homes than Fox News.

On Thursday night, Shepard Smith took third place overall (behind Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity) in the 25-54 year-old demo ratings. On Friday night, Bret Baier surged to third. On Monday, it was The Five. Tuesday night? Greta Van Susteren drew 406,000 viewers and landed in third place overall for the night.

Perhaps it was a boost from Saturday Night Live lampooning his show and curiosity-seekers tuning in to see what it was all about — or maybe it was simply just his turn to rise up in the ratings — but Al Sharpton tied for MSNBC’s ratings lead on Monday night in the 25-54 year old [...]

Friday nights are always a little screwy in the ratings world, with MSNBC trotting out specials at 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., and some hosts opting to cede their spot behind the desk to a guest anchor. On top of all that, it’s Friday. People go out, see movies, do stuff that tends to be a little more fun than sitting at home, watching a cable news repeat. In other words, take the Friday ratings with a much larger grain of salt than you normally would on any other night.

It’s no secret that ratings are a fickle beast. One night, you’re toasting with friends about the 230,000 viewers in the 25 to 54 demo who tuned in to see your interview with, say, Hulk Hogan‘s ex-wife; the next, you hang your head low at the 124,000 who wanted to see you talk with some foreign head of state. These numbers, in short, make little sense. And that’s what makes it fun — the random aberrations that occur every night.

Even with the volatility of the numbers, there are always certain sureties every night in the ratings: Bill O’Reilly will win the night, Fox News will have seven of the top seven shows, and Rachel Maddow will usually be in the top three of the non-FNC shows. On Tuesday night, O’Reilly captured 742,000 viewers in [...]

Piers Morgan — to editorialize for just a moment — is one of our favorite cable news hosts. Maybe it’s the British accent; perhaps its our affinity for Celebrity Apprentice winners. But he hasn’t really, as Brian Stetler of the New York Times noted Thursday, caught on yet in the ratings.

It’s time to take another compelling journey into the realm of monthly cable news ratings through the oh-so-rosy lens of the network’s publicists. What can you expect? Cleverly-crafted bullet points from the MSNBC, CNN, and imaginary* Fox News number-crunchers, all doing their best to somehow make Nielsen’s month-end ratings look as if, yes, everybody won!

The good news: CNN’s Tuesday night debate numbers gave the network a clear-cut win over Fox News in both total viewers and among viewers aged 25-54 in the 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. slots. Additionally, Anderson Cooper got a huge boost from the debate as his lead-in, attracting 405,000 demo viewers and toppling FNC’s Greta Van Susteren at 10:00.

Fox News routinely wins the cable news prime time ratings, and MSNBC has a string of second-place finishes under its belt, but it’s rare to get a night with both channels snagging all of the first and second-place finishes in the 25-54 year-old demo. That was the case Friday night, as the networks ran the [...]

Late Wednesday night, Deadline broke news that Joy Behar would be leaving her show on HLN at the end of the year. And boy, did it do wonders for her ratings. Behar attracted 198,000 viewers in the 25-54 year-old demo. The show still finished fourth, but it was a marked jump from her previous numbers [...]

In a fiery on-air altercation, Neil Cavuto ripped into Don Imus for criticizing his viewership on the Fox Business Network. “My ratings are very consistent,” lambasted Cavuto. “Yours are not, because people don’t like you.”

While Fox News routinely finishes first in the ratings — with even their lowest-rated show beating the highest on any other station — Rachel Maddow‘s 329,000 viewers in the 25-54 year-old demo Wednesday night is still pretty impressive. It’s also the closest in recent memory to making a run at a Fox show on a [...]

There are beatdowns, and then there is what happened to HLN on Wednesday night. The network finished fourth in every time slot except for Nancy Grace‘s (at 8 p.m.) in the 25-54 year-old demo. Five of its seven prime time shows failed to attract 100,000 demo viewers; no other show on any network dipped below [...]

Fox News’ The Five has shown some solid growth in their ratings since their debut, but they hadn’t yet been the highest-rated show on any channel in their demo. Until Friday night. Not only did they win the time slot for the 25-54 year-old demo, but they took down every other news show on cable in that universe. Granted, Laura Ingraham was subbing once again for Bill O’Reilly, but The Five still beat out every other show on their slate, all of which are normally very strong.

We don’t usually get into the CNBC ratings, but it’s hard to ignore the performance of the network’s Your Money, Your Vote debate on Wednesday night. Not only did the debate’s ratings best every other show in prime time, it actually got stronger in its second hour, increasing from 947,000 viewers in the 25-54 year-old [...]

With a shout-out from Entertainment Weekly boosting its place in the public eye, FOX News’ The Five produced its highest ratings in the show’s history on Monday night, attracting 460,000 viewers in the 25-54 year-old demo. The Five, FOX News’ multi-headed replacement for Glenn Beck, debuted in July and has gathered a respectable following over [...]