Tuesday Ratings: Greta Van Susteren Leaps To Third Overall

By Nando Di FinoDec 14th, 2011, 6:48 pm
 

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:

  • Nancy Grace can lay claim to being the most consistent show on television recently. She finished in second place at 8 p.m. with 215,000 viewers.
  • Hannity narrowed the gap between his show and O’Reilly’s on Tuesday, bringing in 524,000 viewers to O’Reilly’s 560,000. Since there are essentially no trends in the ratings, this is likely just a one-night phenomenon.
  • The only shows attracting over one million overall viewers Tuesday night were those on FNC.

    • Tuesday night’s full ratings:

    TV NEWS RATINGS: 25-54 DEMOGRAPHIC (L +SD)
    Fox News CNN MSNBC CNN Headline News
    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)
    Fox News CNN MSNBC CNN Headline News
    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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