Viewers Flock to Fox News, CNN For Shooting

Bian Williams was back on MSNBC for Thursday afternoon's coverage of the Oregon community college shooting, but it was CNN that saw the biggest audience gain as the story unfolded, while Fox News Channel led the pack.

From 2:30 to 7 p.m. Eastern time, Fox News Channel's coverage led by Shepard Smith averaged 2.17 million viewers, topping CNN's 1.1 million and MSNBC's 561,000. But CNN's audience was 87% larger than its average in those hours for the previous four weeks, excluding the unusually high ratings for the U.S. visit of Pope Francis. Under the same comparison, Williams' hours on MSNBC were up by 40%. Fox News, which regularly has the largest audience in cable news, was up 27% in those hours.

The LA Times reports cable news networks avoid publicizing their Nielsen ratings for coverage of tragic events, the numbers are being scrutinized.

The ratings were promising for Williams' return last week during the U.S. visit of Pope Francis, with MSNBC's audience levels more than doubling during his hours at the anchor desk. On Sept. 24, the channel pulled its best ratings for daytime news coverage in more than two years with Williams' pope watch.

But the pope's visit was a planned event with a fixed schedule over several days. The deadly rampage at Umpqua Community College, in which nine people were killed by a gunman who was also a student at the school, was the kind of breaking story that draws viewers looking for real-time developments after first learning of the news elsewhere.

CNN, as the longest-established brand in cable news, usually sees the biggest audience lift in such situations, and NBC News executives privately acknowledge that it will take some time before viewers develop a habit of turning to Williams in those cases.