As the news cycle focus continued to be on Donald Trump’s latest indictment, MSNBC notched another win in primetime. The network averaged 1.99 million viewers on Tuesday evening, with All in with Chris Hayes and The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell winning their time periods. Fox News averaged 1.92 million and CNN posted 779,000.
MSNBC’s coverage topped out during the 9 p.m. ET hour on Monday, in which The Rachel Maddow Show featured live reports from Georgia as well as a pre-scheduled sitdown interview with Hillary Clinton. Maddow’s show averaged 3.9 million viewers, a big spike from the 2.45 million average viewers Maddow received last month.
The former anchor of CNN’s “Reliable Sources” is gearing up for “Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy,” a look at the Fox Corp. cable outlet’s trajectory following the 2020 election and through the much-scrutinized defamation trial brought against it by Dominion Voting Systems. That court proceeding is slated to open Monday.
Broadcast networks passed on carrying Joe Biden’s speech in Philadelphia, as the president cast MAGA Republicans as a threat to democracy. ABC ran Press Your Luck, CBS went with a Young Sheldon rerun and NBC with a Law & Order replay. CNN and MSNBC carried the address, as did news division streaming channels, but Fox News stuck with Tucker Carlson and his critique of the speech as it was happening.
The twice-impeached former president Donald Trump may be banned from using most mainstream social media, but some kindred spirits have found a home on his own “Truth Social” platform: QAnon conspiracy promoters who have also been banned by mainstream social media.
On the Hill this morning at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, the FCC chairman told lawmakers they would have to ask the White House if they wanted to know what was said at his two meetings with President Trump. However, he said he has had no contact with any administration official about companies with business before the FCC and he pledged to maintain the independence of the agency. Pai also side-stepped comment on Trump’s assertions that CNN and Big Three networks’ news divisions were the “enemy of the America public.” Pai and the other two commissioners discussed the post-auction repack of the TV band, suggesting they would oppose forcing stations off the air for failing to meet the deadline for moving to new channels.
