Report: MSM Ignores FNC Ratings Success

Much of the media establishment seems bent on ignoring the incredible ratings success of Fox News. Or, maybe it’s just that Fox has pounded CNN and MSNBC in the ratings for so long that another victory doesn’t seem like “news” – especially with MSNBC imploding and CNN committing to any genre but news in an effort to find new audiences.

But, according to Media critic David Zurawik at The Baltimore Sun,  there are three ratings stories the last two weeks that taken together show Fox News rising to a new and remarkable level of dominance - and they have been under reported in the mainstream media.

• Fox News beat not just CNN and MSNBC, but also ABC, NBC and CBS on Nov. 4, the night of the mid-term elections.  It did so in both total viewers and the key news demographic: viewers 25 to 54 years of age. Fox more than tripled the audiences of MSNBC and CNN in total viewers, while beating ABC, NBC and CBS by more than 3 million, 2 million and 1 million viewers respectively. (See figures at end of post.)
• Second, buoyed by its election-night juggernaut,  Fox was the highest-rated cable channel of the week of Nov. 3, beating such ratings engines as Nickelodeon and ESPN.  That’s not the highest-rated cable news channel, the universe it used to live in. That’s highest-rated period – beating all the entertainment channels like AMC and TNT.
• And finally, last week, Fox News aired a documentary, “The Man Who Killed Usama Bin Laden,” and it drew more than 3 million viewers. Part Two, which drew 3.37 million viewers, was the highest-rated documentary in Fox News history.

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