cable ratings

CNN led the way in cable news ratings during Wednesday’s impeachment of outgoing President Donald Trump, according to early Nielsen Media Research data. According to Nielsen, from 12:30 p.m. ET to 4:45 p.m. Wednesday, CNN brought in a total of 3.804 million average viewers. MSNBC was in second place among the big three cable news networks, pulling in an average of 2.581 million. Fox News delivered 1.391 million average total viewers in that time period.

Alabama’s 52-24 rout of Ohio State in the College Football National Championship game drew 18.7 million viewers for ESPN’s family of networks on Monday. That puts it on pace to be the least-viewed championship game in college football’s era of staging an end-of-season matchup to determine the national champion.

Ratings for Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel topped all news and basic cable channels for a fifth straight year in 2020, according to Nielsen data released on Tuesday. The network averaged 1.9 million viewers per day and 3.6 million in primetime — record levels for cable news channels — during a news-heavy year marked by the coronavirus pandemic, protests for racial justice and a contentious U.S. presidential election.

The complete broadcast, cable and pay TV ratings ranker for 2020 in total viewers and adults 18-49.

Fox News will finish the year again at top of the news channels in primetime, with an average of 3.6 million viewers, up 45% from the same period the previous year. MSNBC averaged 2.2 million, a boost of 24%. CNN saw an even greater increase, as it was up 85% to average 1.8 million.

Since his CNBC debut in late September, The News With Shepard Smith has averaged a modest 280,000 viewers each weeknight at 7 p.m. That’s twice as many viewers as the Shark Tank reruns it replaced — but a fraction of the 2 million-plus viewers that CNN, Fox and MSNBC each attract at the same hour.

Fox News Channel’s primetime coverage of election night 2020 topped all television networks and set a record for the most-watched election night coverage in cable news history, according to early data from Nielsen. FNC’s primetime coverage averaged 13.7 million in total viewers and nearly 5 million in the 25-54 demographic, making it the highest-rated election night coverage in all of television in total viewers and the adults 25-54 demo, beating ABC, NBC, CBS and all cable news networks.

You can tell it’s a presidential election year. Collectively, the news networks CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC averaged just under 10 million viewers in primetime last week, or 72% more than the same week in 2019. CBS won the week in primetime among the broadcast networks, averaging 5.8 million viewers. ABC had 5.7 million, NBC had 4.9 million, Fox had 4.3 million, Univision had 1.14 million, Telemundo had 1.06 million and Ion Television had 1.04 million.

Ad-supported cable business’ fortunes continue to decline unless it’s live programming — news and sports. Cable news networks Fox News and MSNBC and sports-focused ESPN repeated as 1-2-3 atop all basic cable networks in total viewers in Live+7 Nielsen ratings for 2019. That is all the more impressive because live non-entertainment programming gets very little delayed viewing, and even more important for advertisers who put a premium on ad-supported content where commercials can’t be skipped.