Wednesday Cable News Ratings: Re-Airs Rule The Night

by Nando Di Fino | 7:15 pm, December 1st, 2011

» 10 comments

There are a handful shows on cable news during prime time that broadcast once, and then pop up again a couple hours later as a re-air. They’re not always true repeats–in some cases, the entire production crew is still in the control room making sure everything runs smoothly. But there’s a strange phenomenon with the ratings of these shows: sometimes the re-air will actually out-rate the original broadcast. On Wednesday night, this happened with four of the five shows that regularly show up twice: AC360 (better in the 25-54 demo at 10 p.m. than 8 p.m.), The Ed Show (11 p.m. better than 8 p.m.), OutFront (11 p.m. better than 7 p.m.), and Hardball (7 p.m. bests the 5 p.m.). The only re-air to not beat its original broadcast? The O’Reilly Factor, which leads the night in ratings on a regular basis with its 8 p.m. first run.

What does it mean? Who knows. But it’s a fun little fact on a night without much noteworthy news from the numbers.

Some other nuggets from Wednesday:

MSNBC attracted over 200,000 viewers in the demo in three separate time slots (Matthews, Maddow, and O’Donnell at 7:00, 9:00, and 10:00, respectively). O’Donnell pulled a relatively strong rating of 237,000 demo viewers.

HLN’s Special Report at 5 p.m. attracted just 33,000 viewers in the demo. Even if you double that number, it still didn’t threaten the second-worst show.

Here are the complete cable news ratings for Wednesday night:

TV NEWS RATINGS: 25-54 DEMOGRAPHIC (L +SD)

5 pm

The5

392

Blitzer

163

Matthews

148

Special

6 pm

Baier

438

King, USA

Sharpton

148

Prime

7 pm

Shep

384

Burnett

Matthews

211

Issues

133

8 pm

O’Reilly

704

Cooper

167

Schultz

188

Grace

160

9 pm

Hannity

617

Piers

158

Maddow

264

Dr. Drew

110

10 pm

Van Susteren

392

Cooper

184

O’Donnell

237

Behar

11 pm

O’Reilly

419

Burnett

124

Schultz

195

Showbiz

TOTAL DAY

295

119

127

PRIME TIME

573

170

231

116

Data by Nielsen Media Research. Live and same day (DVR) data.

TV NEWS RATINGS: TOTAL VIEWERS (L +SD)

5 pm	The5 1,661	Blitzer 865	Matthews 806	Special 157
6 pm	Baier 2,076	King, USA 587	Sharpton 728	Prime 252
7 pm	Shep 2,033	Burnett 510	Matthews 801	Issues 365
8 pm	O’Reilly 3,546	Cooper 493	Schultz 1,032	Grace 500
9 pm	Hannity 2,758	Piers 582	Maddow 1,006	DrDrew 360
10 pm	Greta 1,795	Cooper 582	O’Donnell 898	Behar 380
11 pm	O’Reilly 1,209	Burnett 372	Schultz 554	Showbiz 247
TOTAL DAY	1,260	424	477	206
PRIME TIME	2,704	552	980	407
Data by Nielsen Media Research. Live and same day (DVR) data

CNN, fox news, HLN, msnbc

Rex derWunderGott

Not strange at all. People aren’t watching these shows TWICE. They’re working that second job, they’re off looking for more work, they’re off at some Occupy event – they’re BUSY Nando – it’s tough being poor and struggling to keep the family mouths above the sewer level.
Anonymous

Nadno, last Wednesday was the day before the Thanksgiving holiday- People were out on the town, for God’s sake.
Anonymous

I keep hearing that Red Eye beats all the non-FNC primetime shows. If so, shouldn’t Red Eye be included. Red Eye is a similar format to The Five in a way…
Anonymous

Why would Nando post 8 day old ratings? These are ratings from November 30th, yesterday.
Anonymous

The Big 10/ACC challenge games were on so perhaps some people caught the repeat version instead of the first-run.

The hot new show Revenge was also a repeat.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CQWUTBF2KSSVOXCR4PSN66L2PM James

God John King is killing Erin Burnet as a lead in. He should have been shown the door with Spitzer.
Anonymous

How I imagine a conversation would go between Cooper and Ed the Union Asshat:

Asshat: “Hey Cooper, I’m kicking your ASS! Take that back to GQ!”

Cooper: “Yes Ed, you also are losing viewers for your network in the all important demo at the prime hour in prime time. Chris Matthews is kicking YOUR ass (twice) with his 7:00 pm Eastern show.”
Anonymous

lol! It is kind of hard to imagine Matthew’s kicking ass in any mental or
physical activity you could possibly come up with. This former Peace Corpseman
is a lightweight. GQfound him to be so UN-influential they didn’t include him on the list!!
Anonymous

Now THAT”S one of the few ways left to call attention to the fact that there are left wingnut shows still on cable and MEDIAite made a story out of it.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Larry-Tucker/1633876282 Larry Tucker

People are watching Fox then the a very few of the curious are watching other Cable shows.

I often watch the later versions of Fox when there is a single showing of another interesting program.