TV Ratings: Bad News For Trump = Good News For Rachel

If it’s a lousy week for President Donald Trump, it’s usually a good week for Rachel Maddow.

MSNBC’s marquee personality took advantage of a busy week of bad news for the president, led by former lawyer Michael Cohen’s plea deal and former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s conviction on corruption charges.

She had the top-rated show on cable television on Tuesday with 3.89 million viewers, reports The Associated Press citing Nielsen data. Maddow beat the usual cable ratings leader, Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, for the week. Hannity won August overall.

Even MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell managed to tie Hannity’s best showing of the week. MSNBC spread the love around the dial: its “Morning Joe” had its best ratings week ever, the Nielsen company said.

Behind its summer juggernaut “America’s Got Talent,” now being shown on two nights, NBC won the week in prime-time with an average of 4.9 million viewers. CBS had 4 million viewers, ABC had 3.6 million, Fox had 2.6 million, ION Television had 1.4 million, Univision and Telemundo were tied with 1.21 million and the CW had 770,000.

Fox News Channel led the cable networks with an average of 2.26 million viewers, taking advantage of its weekend strength. MSNBC had 2.12 million, USA had 1.42 million, HGTV had 1.39 million and CNN had 1.27 million.

Fox News posted +4 percent growth in total prime time viewers vs. its August 2017 delivery. But similar to its rivals, the network lost a chunk of its adults 25-54 audience relative to last year. Perhaps the under-55 crew is getting Trump fatigue? Or maybe the further we get away from the presidential election, the less likely younger demos are to watch cable news.

For the month of August 2018, “The Rachel Maddow Show” was the #1 program in A25-54 across all of cable news as well as for the 9pm time period (including all specials) according to Nielsen. In A25-54, “Maddow” averaged 557,000 viewers (vs. FOX News’ 547,000 and CNN’s 406,000), beating CNN for the 19th straight month. In total viewers, “Maddow” averaged 2.9 million total viewers (vs. CNN’s 1.2 million), beating CNN for the 63rd straight month and ranking as the #2 most-watched show across all cable news.

ABC’s “World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8 million viewers. The “NBC Nightly News” had 7.4 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.7 million.

Good Morning America posted another morning show weekly victory in total viewers, drawing more than 3.8 million total viewers. That’s the show’s largest total audience in 8 weeks.

Season to date, the ABC morning newscast is No. 1 in total viewers, leading Today by +77,000 (4.160 million vs. 4.083 million) to take the top spot at this point of the season for the 6th year in a row.

But on the downside, GMA posted audience losses vs. the comparable week in 2017 yet again. The broadcast was -5 percent in total viewers, and down -16 percent among adults 25-54.

NBC’s Today show still sets the standard when it comes to drawing younger news viewers. The morning show won the month of August in the A25-54 demo, its 36th consecutive monthly win in the category.  Today also won across the board on 3 consecutive days last week – Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday – and came within 36,000 total viewers of upsetting GMA for the week.

Megyn Kelly delivered its highest-rated month in 6 months with 2.4 million viewers.  The show also posted its best A25-54 demo in 5 months.