Fox & Friends Beats Morning Joe Despite Biden Exclusive; Fox News’ Trump Town Hall Scores Big Sunday Night Ratings
Morning Joe scored a huge, news-making exclusive interview on Friday morning, but it wasn’t good enough to win the morning as rival Fox & Friends eked out a win in overall viewers and handily beat the MSNBC show in the coveted 25 – 54 age demographic.
The presumptive Democratic nominee’s first, public interview on the sexual assault allegation lodged against him drove the Friday news cycle, but only pulled in 321,000 viewers in the demo during the 8:00 hour compared to Fox’s 416,000. In P2+ viewers, MJ lost by a hair, 2.093 million to F&F’s 2.094 million. With the Biden interview announced the day before and anticipation building, Morning Joe did win its first hour with 245,000 in the demo and 1.63 million overall, versus Fox & Friends‘ 234,000 and 1.22 million.
The rest of Friday’s ratings, however, belonged to Fox News. It narrowly beat out CNN in the daytime demo, 344,000 to 341,000 and in P2+ 2.04 million to 1.29 million. In primetime, Fox put up 571,000 P25 – 54 viewers and 3.74 million overall. That was good enough to soundly beat second-place CNN in the demo (425,000) and outpace MSNBC, the runner-up, in P2+ viewers (1.97 million). Pacing the network on Friday was the top-rated Hannity, which amassed 4.01 million overall and 627,000 in the demo, good enough to take the day’s cable news crown.
Over the weekend, the standout rating moment was Fox News’ Sunday night virtual town hall with President Donald Trump at the Lincoln Memorial. Trump had several news-making moments and dubious claims during the town hall, and Fox News viewers flocked to the network to tune in. The two-hour event attracted 3.82 million overall viewers and 637,000 in the demo, more than the ratings of CNN and MSNBC combined.
