For the third quarter of 2014, Fox News not only humiliated its leftwing cable news counterparts at CNN and MSNBC during the all-important primetime hours, Fox News also beat all of cable — all hundred or so cable channels, including perennial winners ESPN and USA. THR rightly describes this as a “historic cable ratings victory.”
Here are the third quarter primetime numbers:
FNC: 1,797,000 viewers, up 12 percent (313,000 adults 25-54, up 12 percent)
CNN: 555,000 viewers, up 2 percent (186,000 adults 25-54, up 4 percent)
MSNBC: 557,000 viewers, down 2 percent (150 adults 25-54, down 21 percent)
HLN: 352,000 viewers, down 4 percent (120 adults 25-54, down 12 percent)
In total primteime viewers, Fox nearly doubled the leftwing CNN and MSNBC combined. In demo viewers, Fox earned almost as many as CNN and MSNBC combined. Fox is also up 12% over this same quarter last year. MSNBC sunk a whopping 21%.
While CNN increased its dismal ratings a mere 4% in the demo, that apparently didn’t come from an increase in viewers for CNN’s news programming. The jump came from the network’s move away from news and towards reality programming. In this case, Baby Boomer nostalgia:
CNN, saw a rather unexpected series perched atop its own rankings. Documentary series The Sixties stands as CNN’s most-watched show of the quarter, edging pasting Anderson Cooper with an average 650,000 viewers — 186,000 of them in the key demo.
Hopefully this will force CNN chief Jeff Zucker to move CNN even further away from news programming. Unlike MSNBC, which to its credit is open about its biases, CNN’s news coverage has taken a sharp turn left under Zucker, especially in the realm of identity politics. Over the past year, the network has become a destructive, race-baiting and anti-Christian blight on American discourse.
The less news CNN does, the better it will be for all of us.
Monday I pointed out the steep decline in MSNBC’s primetme demo ratings. One important point I neglected to make is that this collapse occured during a time when there is a boom in national news. Betwen Ferguson, ISIS, the deaths of Robin Williams and Joan Rivers, MSNBC has no one to blame but its bland, boring, one-note self for its slow motion decline into Al Jazeera America relevance.
Fox News wins because it offers reporting found nowhere else. While the whole of the MSM ignores the economy, Benghazi, the IRS, the border crisis, and anything else inconvenient to the Obama administration and the cause of government largess, Americans know they can tune into Fox for some scrutiny of these issues. Watching CNN and MSNBC circle the wagons to protect the Obama Administration from the truth is probably getting old, even for Democrats.
While Fox News scrutinizes government, MSNBC and CNN protect government.
Moreover, Fox News offers diverse points of view. While MSNBC is a gaggle of leftwing extremists, as is CNN (with the exception of Jake Tapper), Fox offers diverse approaches and points of view during its primetime programming. Bret Baier, Greta Van Susteren, Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly and Sean Hannity represent a much broader spectrum than anything presented by the tired, leftwing, provincial elites at CNN and MSNBC.
Fox viewers appreciate diversity, which is probably why studies have shown Fox News is able to attract more Democrats than either CNN or MSNBC.
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