Fox News
Different quarter, same result.
The Fox News train, driven by Jesse Watters, kept rolling between July and September, with the right-leaning channel dominating its cable rivals and beating ABC and CBS in weekday primetime viewership. CNN and MSNBC, meanwhile, had a crueler summer.
And one other thing to note before moving on to the Q3 figures: Fox News is leading all of the networks in weekday primetime ratings to date in 2025.
FNC is averaging 3.33 million primetime viewers between Monday and Friday this year, topping CBS (3.17M), ABC (3.08M), and NBC (3.04M), as well as Fox (1.48M) and ESPN (2.13M), per Nielsen data released on Wednesday. MSNBC on the year is averaging 1.15M primetime viewers, and CNN is averaging 641,000.
Here is a look at how the three major cable channels performed in primetime Mon-Sun in Q3, per Nielsen:
- FNC: 2.48M (243K in 25-54 demo); down 9% year-over-year
- MSNBC: 802K (66K in demo); down 46% year-over-year
- CNN: 538K (87K in demo); down 42% year-over-year
During the week, Jesse Watters Primetime was the top primetime cable show, averaging 3.30 million viewers and 323,000 viewers in the demo; Sean Hannity was next in line, averaging 2.9 million viewers and 305,000 demo viewers.
Looking at some of the other big names in cable, Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC Monday program, and ex-Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s Tuesday through Friday show The Breifing in the same time slot, averaged 1.84 million viewers and 176,000 in the demo. And MSNBC’s All In with/ Chris Hayes averaged 865,000 viewers and 76,000 in the demo.
Over on CNN in primetime, The Source With Kaitlan Collins average 588,000 viewers and 101,000 in the demo, while NewsNight, hosted by Abby Phillip, averaged 578,000 viewers and 111,000 in the demo; looking at a few other notable programs — Jake Tapper’s show, The Lead, averaged 587,000 viewers and 93,000 in the demo, and Anderson Cooper 360 averaged 616,000 viewers and 101,000 in the demo.
And when it comes to late night, Greg Gutfeld averaged 2.94 million viewers and 320,000 in the demo.
For comparison to other late-night hosts — and it is not an exact apples-to-apples comparison, considering the different times the shows start — Jimmy Kimmel averaged 1.77 million viewers in Q2, Stephen Colbert averaged 2.42 million on CBS, and Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show averaged
A few other big picture things to note:
Fox News during the week averaged 2.94 million (299K demo) primetime viewers, which came in second overall behind NBC’s 2.99M viewers. It was FNC’s third-best Q3 ever for weekday primetime, trailing 2020 and 2024.
As for CNN, it had its lowest primetime demo ever (87K) during weekday primetime, and MSNBC’s 66K in the demo was its lowest since 1998.
Cable news up-start NewsNation continued to show growth, meanwhile. In September the network had year-over-year double digit growth, including a 23% boost in prime time to 118,000 total average viewers.