On Thursday night, Shepard Smith took third place overall (behind Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity) in the 25-54 year-old demo ratings. On Friday night, Bret Baier surged to third. On Monday, it was The Five. Tuesday night? Greta Van Susteren drew 406,000 viewers and landed in third place overall for the night.

Is this just some fun little game Fox News is playing with all of us? Rotating shows in and out of third place by manipulating Nielsen families with subtle mind games? One never knows. But for now, kudos to Van Susteren for being one of only three shows on the night — and the only non-O’Reilly/Hannity show this week — to draw over 400,000 demo viewers.

On a related note, we’ve heard that Van Susteren and her crew might have blown out Rush Limbaugh‘s power in his studio for 15 minutes today (although an emergency back-up source ensured the radio show wasn’t interrupted) as they were prepping to tape an interview with him in Florida. The lights for the interview were supposedly off, meaning it wasn’t FNC draining the power or tripping the circuits, so who actually blew out the power is in dispute. But the last time this happened to Rush’s studio? When Fox News previously came to Florida to interview him. A portion of Van Susteren’s talk with Limbagh will air tonight on her show, at 10 p.m. An extended version of the interview is slated for next week.

Other nuggets from Tuesday night:

Tuesday night’s full ratings:

TV NEWS RATINGS: 25-54 DEMOGRAPHIC (L +SD)
5 pm	The5  320	Blitzer  131	Matthews  185	Special  55
6 pm	Baier  352	King, USA  145	Sharpton  175	Prime  82
7 pm	Shep  313	Burnett  127	Matthews  184	Issues  126
8 pm	O’Reilly  560	Cooper  153	Schultz  202	Grace  215
9 pm	Hannity  524	Piers  166	Maddow  221	Dr. Drew  92
10 pm	Van Susteren  406	Cooper  191	O’Donnell  186	Behar  96
11 pm	O’Reilly  395	Burnett  157	Schultz  110	Showbiz  52
TOTAL DAY	296	129	139	86
PRIME TIME	497	170	203	133
Data by Nielsen Media Research. Live and same day (DVR) data.

TV NEWS RATINGS: TOTAL VIEWERS (L +SD)
5 pm	The5  1,481	Blitzer  581	Matthews  778	Special  182
6 pm	Baier  1,872	King, USA  525	Sharpton  783	Prime 298
7 pm	Shep  1,737	Burnett  472	Matthews  793	Issues  412
8 pm	O’Reilly  2,892	Cooper  575	Schultz  889	Grace  603
9 pm	Hannity  2,067	Piers  638	Maddow  994	DrDrew  402
10 pm	Greta  1,672	Cooper  513	O’Donnell 801	Behar  386
11 pm	O’Reilly  1,211	Burnett  330	Schultz 447	Showbiz  218
TOTAL DAY	1,318	413	539	251
PRIME TIME	2,213	575	895	459
Data by Nielsen Media Research. Live and same day (DVR) data

(Image credit: Damian Dovarganes)

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Nando Di Fino
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