Ruhle Goes Big, Lemon Goes Fractional | Winners & Losers in Today’s Green Room

MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle is reportedly replacing Brian Williams on the network’s 11:00 p.m. hour.

MSNBC will soon announce Ruhle will be taking over for Williams, who left in December. Sources tell Axios that Ruhle’s 9 a.m. hour of MSNBC Live will be folded into Morning Joe, meaning the program hosted by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski will expand into a 4th hour.

MSNBC declined to comment on the Axios report.

Williams’ departure came after a 28-year history with NBC. Ruhle’s career with MSNBC began in 2016 when she joined the network after working as an anchor and managing editor for Bloomberg Television. Aside from hosting her MSNBC Live hour, Ruhle has also functioned as a senior business correspondent for NBC News..

On Thursday she reported in that capacity on the latest economic snapshot, “and, boy, does it look good,” she said.

Ruhle also had an impressive interview with Rep. Pete Sessions this morning over the issue of whether members of Congress should be banned from trading stocks while they’re in office.

Hostile to the premise of the interview, Sessions argued, “No one is concerned about how much money members of Congress make. And we do our job. But this is an issue that is a populist notion poppy nut.”

“Right now the way the rules are written, you have access to information that the public does not,” said Ruhle. “Why is it okay for you to use that information, sensitive information, to enrich yourselves?”

“If I was an officer of a publicly-traded company I couldn’t take information I knew about that company and then trade the stock,” said Ruhle.

Sessions dodged, responding that he’s never received insider information and ignoring the implicit contention that being privy to legislation and regulation is having access to sensitive information.

It was a great interview, on a day when news is breaking about a potential big move for Ruhle at the network.

That’s a double win.

Lawrence O’Donnell landed in second place on MSNBC on Monday night, with a solid 1.53 million average total viewers.

Fox News scored the top six shows in terms of total average viewers, with three programs over 3.5 m.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow landed in 7th place with 2.26 million total average viewers, just shy of Laura Ingraham’s 2.27.

Ingraham won her time slot at 10 p.m., beating O’Donnell and crushing CNN’s Don Lemon, who trailed in third place with 501,000 total average viewers.

That puts Lemon at just 22% of Ingraham in the hour, or to put it another way, Fox’s 10 p.m. pulled 4.5 times what CNN’s Lemon was able to draw. It’s a similar thrashing to Monday’s, when Ingraham grabbed 2.23 million to Lemon’s 516k.

On Friday the 21st and Monday the 24th, Lemon drew about half as many viewers as MSNBC’s O’Donnell. In Tuesday’s numbers below, Lemon only got a third of O’Donnell’s audience, at 501k to Last Word‘s 1.53 million.

Overall, CNN was in last among the big three in total viewers and in the demo on the day, and in total viewers and in the demo in prime time. So last across the board.

Here is a full breakdown of Friday’s cable news ratings by show.

As for the three cable news networks overall, here are the total day averages in total viewers and the 25-54 category.

Total viewers:
• CNN: 469,000
• Fox News: 1.99 million
• MSNBC: 898,000

25-54 Demo:
• CNN: 101,000
• Fox News: 340,000
• MSNBC: 105,000

Here are the prime time averages in total viewers and the 25-54 demo.

Total viewers:
• CNN: 568,000
• Fox News: 2.96 million
• MSNBC: 1.72 million

25-54 Demo:
• CNN: 136,000
• Fox News: 492,000
• MSNBC: 195,000

Read the full article, including top overall primetime averages, here from Mediaite+!