CNN Ratings in Free-Fall, Fox Dominates During Second Quarter

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Jul 13, 2018

CNN has had some awful days lately, even by their standards.

The once-trusted news outlet garnered only 929,000 viewers in primetime in the coveted 25-54 demographic, compared to Fox’s 2.4 million.

Monday, July 2, the network achieved a startlingly low 770,000 viewers in primetime, while non-primetime hosts Jake Tapper, Erin Burnett, and Wolf Blitzer received fewer than 700,000 viewers.

Recently, there have been days when CNN has attracted fewer viewers in total than Fox attracted in the 25-54 demographic.

Despite running an apparently-sinking ship, CNN President Jeff Zucker was recently signed to a new contract through 2020.

Fox News, on the other hand, continued to dominate in Q2 of 2018, becoming the most-watched cable news network for the eighth straight quarter, according to Ad Week. 

“[T]he network claimed 10 of the top 15 cable news programs in total viewers, and 8 of the top 15 in the 25-54 demo for Q2 2018,” said Ad Week. “FNC’s evening and prime time programs were among the top 4 shows in total viewers including, Hannity as the No. 1 program in all of cable news with 3,368,000 total viewers and 685,000 in the 25-54 demo. Hannity also delivered a program high in both categories since returning to the 9 p.m. time slot (Sept. 25, 2017).”

In the daytime, CNN and MSNBC just barely topped Fox’s viewership in the same demographic.

Fox’s “Hannity” is once again the most-watched show in cable news, averaging 3.368 million viewers, while MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” clocked in at second with 2.7 million. Both Fox’s “Ingraham Angle” and “Tucker Carlson Tonight” averaged about 2.6 million in earlier time slots than Maddow.