2Q Cable News Ratings: MSNBC Beats CNN

Ratings for 2023’s second quarter are in and MSNBC has outnumbered CNN’s total day demographic viewership for the first quarter in nine years, since the fourth quarter 2019, according to TheWRAP.

MSNBC averaged 95,776 viewers in the key cable demo among adults aged 25-54, securing a slim victory over CNN when compared to CNN’s demo viewership of 94,513, according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data for total day (Monday through Sunday 6 a.m. to 6 a.m).

As expected, however, Fox News swept CNN and MSNBC with a demo viewership of 140,754 viewers during the same time frame.

Using a slightly different total day measurement (Monday through Sunday 6 a.m. to 2 a.m.), which is not typically used by Nielsen, MSNBC’s lead against CNN in terms of demo viewership widened, with MSNBC scoring an average 106,211 demo viewers while CNN received 104,321 demo viewers on average. Similarly, Fox News averaged 156,430 demo viewers during this timeframe.

As expected, Fox News dominated among all of the measured ratings categories, beating CNN and MSNBC in viewership in total day and primetime for the ninth consecutive quarter and scoring the highest number of primetime viewers in cable news for 86 consecutive quarters.

In terms of total viewership for total day (Monday through Sunday 6 a.m. to 6 a.m.), Fox News took the No. 1 spot with 1.16 million total viewers, while MSNBC came in second place with 796,000 total viewers and CNN came in third place with 483,000 total viewers.

The trend remained steady in the alternate total day measurement (Monday through Sunday 6 a.m. to 2 a.m.) as Fox News scored 1.32 million total viewers, while MSNBC scored second place with 896,000 total viewers and CNN received 514,000 total viewers.

Graphics Courtesy of RoadMN

In primetime, Fox News led with 1.69 million total viewers as MSNBC scored 1.27 million total viewers and CNN averaged 573,000 total viewers. In the demo for primetime, Fox News averaged 179,000 adults 25-54, while MSNBC received 139,000 viewers in the demo and CNN averaged 126,000 viewers in the demo.