A Night To Forget: CNN’s Worst Ratings In A Decade
Cable news ratings, December 28, 2010:
•Perhaps Piers Morgan might want to launch his show a bit sooner? Admittedly, it’s the week between Christmas and New Year’s and most shows are seeing lower-than-normal ratings, but CNN had it’s worst night in a decade Tuesday: according to Nielsen, last night was CNN’s lowest rated weeknight since May of 2000 (among viewers 25-54, the key demographic for advertisers). The numbers were dismal across the board, with every hour from 6 p.m. through midnight averaging less than 100,000 viewers. After the soon-to-be-replaced Larry King Live, the poorest performing show was AC360, with a meager 61,000 viewers 25-54 at 10 p.m.
•Fox News, meanwhile, stayed dominant even on an off week, with all of Fox’s key primetime shows winning their timeslots but one–the 11 p.m. re-air of The O’Reilly Factor, which lost out not to any of MSNBC’s standard news and politics fare, but the true crime series Lockup.
Here’s the full scoreboard:
| TV NEWS RATINGS: 25-54 DEMOGRAPHIC (L +SD) | ||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| 5 pm | Beck
400 |
Blitzer
112 |
Matthews
161 |
Showbiz
63 |
| 6 pm | Baier
355 |
Blitzer
91 |
Ed Show
147 |
Prime
87 |
| 7 pm | Shep
335 |
King, USA
83 |
Matthews
135 |
Issues
111 |
| 8 pm | O’Reilly
365 |
ParkerSpitzer
73 |
Olbermann
128 |
Grace
148 |
| 9 pm | Hannity
263 |
King
54 |
Maddow
99 |
Behar
77 |
| 10 pm | Van Susteren
168 |
Cooper
61 |
Special
184 |
Grace
87 |
| 11 pm | O’Reilly
196 |
Cooper
63 |
Special
230 |
Showbiz
81 |
| TOTAL DAY | 228 | 93 | 129 | 101 |
| PRIME TIME | 265 | 64 | 137 | 101 |
| Data by Nielsen Media Research. Live and same day (DVR) data. | ||||
| TV NEWS RATINGS: TOTAL VIEWERS (L +SD) | ||||
|
|
|
|
|
| 5 pm | Beck
1637 |
Blitzer
548 |
Matthews
668 |
Showbiz
138 |
| 6 pm | Baier
1983 |
Blitzer
411 |
Ed Show
598 |
Prime
224 |
| 7 pm | Shep
1618 |
King, USA
303 |
Matthews
531 |
Issues
364 |
| 8 pm | O’Reilly
1789 |
ParkerSpitzer
340 |
Olbermann
603 |
Grace
556 |
| 9 pm | Hannity
1256 |
King
266 |
Maddow
446 |
Behar
322 |
| 10 pm | Van Susteren
904 |
Cooper
381 |
Special
324 |
Grace
255 |
| 11 pm | O’Reilly
683 |
Cooper
232 |
Special
355 |
Showbiz
231 |
| TOTAL DAY | 1218 | 358 | 385 | 257 |
| PRIME TIME | 1316 | 331 | 457 | 367 |
| Data by Nielsen Media Research. Live and same day (DVR) data | ||||
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