Egyptian Crisis Gives CNN a Ratings Boost

CNN reaffirmed that it remains a brand for breaking news Tuesday evening, with the protests in Egypt providing the compelling story.

According to Bill Carter's Media Decoder blog at nytimes.com, , the Cable News Network, which now routinely trails both its competitors in prime time, pushed ahead of one of them, MSNBC, each hour Tuesday night.

Fox News still led the competition across the board with its lineup of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren. But the CNN hosts grabbed second place each hour and knocked MSNBC into third place every hour of the evening starting at 5 p.m.

The new CNN’s entries, “Parker Spitzer” at 8 p.m. and “Piers Morgan” at 9, both reversed their recent third-place trend with shows devoted largely to the events in Egypt. Anderson Cooper, who has been in the middle of the action on location in Cairo, came closest to first place, trailing Ms. Van Susteren by only about 40,000 viewers in the audience group news channels sell to advertisers — people between the ages of 25 and 54.

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