FNC Dominates CableTV's News Week

Cable television networks offer sports, reality, comedy and drama. But what’s selling now is opinionated news, according to the Associated Press.

Sixteen of the 17 most-watched programs on cable last week were either on Fox News Channel or MSNBC, the Nielsen company said. The only exception was coverage of the NBA draft on ESPN.

Three editions of Sean Hannity’s show on Fox were the three most-watched programs. Fox and MSNBC were the two highest-rated cable news networks for the week, and Fox News did better than Fox’s broadcast entertainment network.

FNC’s special, Charles Krauthammer: His Words, was the No. 1 cable news telecast on Friday, on June 22nd with almost 2.8 million in total viewers and 402,000 in the 25-54 demo. The Wednesday June 20th edition of Hannity was basic cable’s most-watched program for the week with 3.6 million total viewers; which is even more than the 3.2 million total ESPN’s NBA Draft broadcast drew.

For broadcasters, NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” is clearly the summer’s most dominant show, with a margin of more than 4 million viewers over any other program.

Despite the “Talent” head start, CBS was the week’s most popular network in prime time, averaging 4.3 million viewers. NBC had 4.1 million, ABC had 3.4 million, Fox had 2.1 million, Univision had 1.5 million, ION Television had 1.4 million, Telemundo had 1.1 million and the CW had 810,000.

Fox News averaged 2.45 million viewers in prime time. MSNBC had 1.73 million, USA had 1.45 million, ESPN had 1.42 million and HGTV had 1.39 million.

Basic Cable Ranker: Week of June 18 (Total Viewers) on Scribd

Basic Cable Ranker: Week of June 18 (A25-54) on Scribd

ABC’s “World News Tonight” stayed in first among the evening newscasts with a 7.7 million viewer average. NBC’s “Nightly News” was second with 7.2 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.4 million viewers.