MSNBC’s Ratings Hinge on Politics

CNN and Fox News enjoyed a ratings boom this spring when there was a tsunami of news, between the escalating Covid-19 crisis and nationwide protests over police brutality.

The same didn’t happen at MSNBC. Its overall viewership barely grew in the second quarter, and the network lost viewers in the key demographic for advertisers, according to The Wall Street Journal citing Nielsen data.

More than any other cable news channel, MSNBC relies on political news to drive its ratings. Its prime-time audience surged in the years after the 2016 presidential election, helping it leapfrog CNN, as Americans followed nonstop news involving President Donald Trump, such as special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and the president’s impeachment.

But for much of 2020, politics hasn’t been the big story. By the end of the second quarter, CNN had doubled its audience in the key news demographic of adults 25 to 54 years old, compared with the end of 2019. Ratings leader Fox News jumped 55%, while MSNBC’s viewership rose about 5%, and it fell back into third place behind CNN, according to Nielsen data.

MSNBC’s total prime-time audience remains higher than CNN’s. When politics came back to the forefront in late August, MSNBC got stronger, winning back viewers and narrowing its gap with CNN in the key demographic. The network finished the third quarter with its largest total audience so far this year. A contested presidential election could mean intense viewer interest in politics for a prolonged period, a likely boon for MSNBC.

Nielsen Data, Wall Street Journal graphic

The new chairman of NBCUniversal News Group, Cesar Conde, isn’t satisfied with MSNBC’s heavy reliance on politics and is determined not to miss out on ratings surges during big national news stories such as the coronavirus crisis and the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd, people familiar with his thinking said.

Conde is undertaking a review of NBCUniversal’s news operations that includes an analysis of MSNBC’s audience trends, according to people familiar with the matter. He wants to establish a brighter line between daytime news coverage and evening opinion analysis, they say.

The financial stakes are high. WarnerMedia’s CNN and Fox Corp.’s Fox News are both on track to post single-digit percentage growth in TV ad revenue in 2020, while MSNBC is on pace to post a single-digit percentage decline in TV ad revenue, according to Kagan, a unit of S&P Global Intelligence.