Hannity, Tucker Carlson Tonight Top Cable News on Wednesday, Beat Premiere of CBS’ Big Brother in Overall Viewers

Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight topped all of cable news in total viewers and A25-54 viewers on Wednesday, respectively. Both programs also had more overall viewers [Hannity with 3,968,000 viewers and Tucker Carlson Tonight with 3,880,000 viewers] than CBS’ season 22 premiere of Big Brother, which had 3,642,000 viewers in its first night back.

Fox News was the top rated network in prime time, early morning, and total day, in both overall viewers and the demo. In primetime, Tucker Carlson Tonight dominated all of cable news with 714,000 viewers in the demo, followed by Hannity who pulled in 643,000 A25-54 viewers on Wednesday.

CNN won the daytime demo on Wednesday for the fourth time in the early stages of August. The network had an average of 289,000 A25-54 viewers on Wednesday between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

In daytime, the first hour of CNN Newsroom at 1 p.m. had the network’s highest ratings bringing in 320,000 A24-54 viewers. The Lead With Jake Tapper, guest-hosted by Pamela Brown, had the network’s highest overall viewers in the daytime with 1,311,000 total viewers.

In the second day of returning after a vacation, MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show moved up to third in overall viewers and finished fifth in the demo with 3,386,000 viewers and 525,000 A25-54 viewers, respectively. Four Fox programs — Hannity, Tucker Carlson Tonight, The Five, and The Ingraham Angle held the other four spots in the top-five of cable news on Wednesday.