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Big News Day Means Big Ratings For Both Fox News And CNN

Ratings
» 10 comments

During a heavy news day with coverage of Libya, the East Coast earthquake, and Hurricane Irene, both Fox News and CNN saw an significant increase of viewers of their cable news channels.

  • Not surprisingly, FNC remained the most-watched cable news channel.  In fact, during both Total Day and Primetime, FNC beat both CNN and MSNBC combined in total viewers.  And in the 25-54 demographic, FNC again beat both CNN and MSNBC combined in Primetime and beat them both individually in Total Day. 
  • Also unsurprisingly, CNN saw a spike in their dayside numbers due to incredibly compelling front line coverage of the the unrest in Libya led by Sara Sidner and Matthew Chance (the later was being held in captivity by pro-Gaddafi captors.) As is often the case, hard news typically means increased viewers accross the CNN programming slate.

    Here are the complete cable news ratings for Tuesday night:

    TV NEWS RATINGS: 25-54 DEMOGRAPHIC (L +SD)
    Fox News CNN MSNBC CNN Headline News
    5 pm The5

    412

    Blitzer

    517

    Matthews

    192

    Special

    173

    6 pm Baier

    475

    Blitzer

    407

    Live

    169

    Prime

    130

    7 pm Shep

    517

    King, USA

    317

    Matthews

    155

    Issues

    120

    8 pm O’Reilly

    851

    Cooper

    384

    O’Donnell

    197

    Grace

    190

    9 pm Hannity

    616

    Morgan

    275

    Maddow

    251

    DrDrew

    152

    10 pm Van Susteren

    468

    Cooper

    294

    Schultz

    235

    Behar

    120

    11 pm O’Reilly

    439

    Libya Coverage

    239

    O’Donnell

    192

    Showbiz

    122

    TOTAL DAY 412 315 158 111
    PRIME TIME 647 317 228 153
    Data by Nielsen Media Research. Live and same day (DVR) data.
    TV NEWS RATINGS: TOTAL VIEWERS (L +SD)
    Fox News CNN MSNBC CNN Headline News
    5 pm The5

    1,614

    Blitzer

    1.527

    Matthews

    625

    Special

    452

    6 pm Baier

    2,301

    Blitzer

    1148

    Live

    647

    Prime

    425

    7 pm Shep

    1,942

    King, USA

    919

    Matthews

    584

    Issues

    548

    8 pm O’Reilly

    3,360

    Cooper

    1,057

    O’Donnell

    732

    Grace

    696

    9 pm Hannity

    2,395

    Morgan

    819

    Maddow

    966

    DrDrew

    494

    10 pm Greta

    1,826

    Cooper

    862

    Ed Show

    812

    Behar

    440

    11 pm O’Reilly

    1,299

    Libya Coverage

    611

    O’Donnell

    474

    Showbiz

    451

    TOTAL DAY 1.547 872 529 355
    PRIME TIME 2,527 913 837 536
    Data by Nielsen Media Research. Live and same day (DVR) data

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    • Anonymous

      Seems like when big news happens viewers still lean forward to stay on Fox.
      Even when CNN can’t find Tripoli of the map, they still beat MSDNC HA ! 

    • RACE BAITING@6 RESIST WE MUCH!

      Looks like Rev.Al is building steam……..starting next week  he’ll have special mega-phone round tables on wednesdays 

    • Anonymous

      To be fair to the not even mentioned MSNBC their boss, Barack Obama, sent out a blanket order stating: No matter what happens while he is on Martha’s Vinyard they must pretend everything is just honky dorey back on the main land…..and those morons listened…..PSYCH!

    • ROTFLMAO

      I used to say “Good Lord, they could not possibly find a worse Commentator than Fat Eddie!”
      So what do they do? “They gave us Chunk!”
      So I said OK, they will never find another one that awful!
      Wrong!!!!
      They have hired Al Sharpton full time! AL SHARPTON ??
      AL SHARPTON!!!!
      They already had Tingles, O’Donnell, Morning Goober, and Ralph!
      Look up there at those ratings again.
      Let’s see if we can figure this out!!
      lollol

    • ObamaSux

      Shockingly even on a “Big News Day” no one watches PMSNBC.  What is this world coming to?

    • gordonbloyershow

      MSNBC is a joke network with joke commentators.

    • Anonymous

      What, is Joyella on vacation?  Or is it just because this story isn’t a “so and so is only 100,000 viewers away from such and such on FNC”? 

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JUT2TATEV3OHGQ7HZRYN472XVM Felix

      And I Repeat: “Not surprisingly, FNC remained the most-watched cable news channel…  both Day and Primetime… beat both CNN and MSNBC combined…”

      Well, I guess since FOX is not a real news channel, ONLY the Libs are watching the “real” news (queue MSNBC)… must be very few of them… and why they are smarter than everybody else (or so they think)…

      Betcha a dollar to a doughnut, The Messiah watches MSNBC!

    • Anonymous

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      http://youtu.be/SsfBawqPi5w

    • JoeP-goskins-55

      FNC, being the only Republican/conservative network, should naturally get about half of the news cable ratings since it’s the only Rep/conserv network.  And it makes sense that the remaining cable news networks, led by CNN and MSNBC, would (combined) garner the other half of the viewers, since their audience skew more towards the left.

      So I don’t understand why people think it’s such a big deal that FNC always leads in the ratings.  If there were a couple other networks that skewed toward Rep/conservative viewers to challenge Fox, then it would be a different story.  But so far Fox has no one to challenge them in their type of programming (Republican, conservative, ultra-conservative and wacky far-right conservative viewers).

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