CNN Hits Lowest Ratings in Prime Time Demo Ratings Since 1991 As Trump Trial Coverage Flounders
Steven Hirsch/New York Post via AP, Pool
As much of cable news was dominated by coverage of former President Donald Trump’s porn star hush money trial in May, the verdict is in on whether the wall-to-wall coverage was a resounding success with CNN viewers.
CNN’s average monthly viewership among the key 25-54 age demographic slipped to its smallest audience since 1991. The network brought in 96,000 average demo viewers for the month — with its previously lowest-rated month coming in March 2023 with 100,000 average demo viewers. One important caveat: CNN, like the rest of the news media, has diversified its business beyond basic cable since its launch, and is drawing younger viewers in places like Max, YouTube, online and on app — which is an audience not included in these numbers from Nielsen.
Still, ratings remain the most important metric for cable news networks. While CNN did show significant growth in its daytime hours, up some 44 percent year over year, its total prime time audience was almost quadrupled by Fox News – 518,000 total average viewers to 2 million for Fox. MSNBC ended the month with 1.167 million average total prime time viewers and 816,000 total average day viewers. In the demo, Fox scored 199,000 average prime time viewers, while MSNBC had 110,000 average viewers.
Fox ended the month with 1.3 million average total day viewers, its best month since March 2023 – before Tucker Carlson’s ouster. CNN’s total day viewers came in at 468,000, landing it fifth overall on cable, while Fox News was number one and CNN came in at number two. CNN’s total 518,000 average prime time viewers landed the network eleventh overall, while Fox came in third behind sports-heavy TNT and ESPN – MSNBC was fourth overall in prime time viewers.
In terms of growth, Fox was up 32 percent in prime time viewers year-over-year and up 37 percent in the demo. Both CNN and MSNBC dipped in the prime time demo – down 14 and 9 percent, respectively. CNN and MSNBC made gains in both prime time and daytime total viewers, but dipped in the demo.
MSNBC scored a win for the month at 4 p.m. as Nicolle Wallace topped the charts in total viewers, also landing the network’s highest-rated show with an average 1.6 million viewers over her two hours. Fox swept the top seven highest-rated shows for the month, with The Five (3.1 million), Jesse Watters Prime Time (2.66 million), and Hannity (2.35 million) rounding out the top three.
Wallace landed at eighth overall, while Lawrence O’Donnell (1.54 million) had the network’s next highest-rated show — landing at fifteenth place overall. CNN’s highest-rated program landed at twenty-ninth place — as Jake Tapper brought in 765,000 average viewers. Erin Burnett and Wolf Blitzer were close behind at thirtieth and thirty-first place on all of cable news.
In the demo, Fox scored the top thirteen rated shows on cable news with Gutfeld!, The Five and Jesse Watters Prime Time taking the top three slots – in that order. Wallace and Tapper also led their networks in the demo.
