The Daily Beast’s Confider newsletter provides an interesting update on Fox News viewership in the wake of Tucker Carlson’s departure. I have no comments of my own other than that I thought readers might share my interest in the numbers.
Confider first notes “the negative impact” of the Trump town hall on CNN’s ratings: “Last week, the cable news pioneer suffered its lowest-rated week since June 2015, averaging just 429,000 total daily viewers from Monday-Friday. CNN was also down double digits compared to the same week last year in both total viewership and in the key advertising demographic of viewers ages 25-54.”
Unfortunately, CNN’s woes have been MSNBC’s gain: “MSNBC more than doubled CNN’s daily audience, drawing 976,000 total viewers, while Fox News averaged 1.4 million. MSNBC was up more than 20 percent in both total and demo viewership metrics for Monday-Friday.”
However, “Fox News was down 41 percent in the key demo year-to-year and 24 percent in total viewers, having seen its ratings plummet as angry right-wingers flee after Tucker Carlson’s shock firing. In fact, Fox’s post-Tucker weekday demo audience is the lowest its been since the first week of September 2001. Ratings data shows that primetime is where both Fox and CNN are suffering the most.”
Fox’s woes have been Newsmax’s gain: “Since the town hall, CNN has seen several of its weeknight hours—including Anderson Cooper—fall behind Newsmax, the fringe-right channel that has surged since Carlson’s ouster. Last week, CNN averaged just 447,000 total viewers, a year-over-year drop of 30 percent. (Its demo audience of 104,000 was only down 25 percent from last year.) Friday’s ratings only seemed to hammer home just how dire the situation is for CNN right now.”
This is hilarious: “[CNN’s] much-hyped interview show hosted by Chris Wallace averaged only 224,000 total viewers at 10 p.m., drawing 60,000 fewer viewers than Newsmax’s Friday night offering.”
Back to Fox News: “While Fox News still led in both total and demo viewership in weeknight primetime last week, the conservative cable giant’s overall audience was down 38 percent and the demo viewership dropped an eye-popping 60 percent. MSNBC, on the other hand, saw its demo audience shoot up 44 percent.”
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