TVCable News: Megyn Kelly Draws a Large, Older Audience

Megyn Kelly

On her first night as a central player in the Fox News prime-time lineup, Megyn Kelly scored impressively with the network’s core audience of older viewers, but, according to Bill Carter at The NYTimes, did not register much improvement in attracting additional viewers in the category that makes money for cable news networks, viewers between the ages of 25 and 54.

In fact, among that group, Kelly finished second to Rachel Maddow on MSNBC in the 9 p.m. hour. That qualifies as something of a surprise given the amount of publicity Fox News put behind the introduction of Ms. Kelly and her status as the fastest rising star at the network.

Certainly, the attention surrounding Kelly’s first prime-time program paid off in terms of adding viewers, though they happened to be largely over 55. Ms. Kelly averaged a total audience of 2.1 million viewers for her debut edition of “The Kelly File” from 9 to 10 p.m. That was an increase of 32 percent from the audience that Mr. Hannity had been averaging for the previous four Mondays in that hour.

But of that 2.1 million viewership only 289,000 were 25 to 54 years old, roughly 14 percent of her total audience. Ms. Maddow, MSNBC’s biggest name, beat Ms. Kelly on Monday with an audience of 299,000 among the younger viewers, though she was far behind in total viewers with 997,000. That meant Ms. Maddow averaged about 30 percent of her audience in the age group that makes money for her network.

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