All 153 Linear TV Channels Ranked by 2023 Viewership

Whoever said linear television is dying did not tell NBC or Fox News Channel. (Though they would also be right.) 

In IndieWire’s now-annual ranking of every TV channel by viewers, NBC pretty comfortably came out on top. 

No fake news here: Fox News was again no. 1 on cable, making it eight years in a row. 

For calendar 2022, they ranked all 126 Nielsen-rated basic cable channels. This year, they upped the ante and added broadcast networks and premium TV channels to the mix; overall that’s 153 channels.

The Top 20

It is no surprise the Top 4 channels of 2023 are the so-called “Big 4” broadcasters: NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox. Even if you stopped watching broadcast television years ago, a lot of (older, primarily) Americans still tune in. 

The medium is ostensibly free (with an antenna) and the channels are very findable within the bundle. 

And broadcast nets carry sports, local news, and late-night TV — what more could you want this side of streaming? 

Hate or love Fox News for the political leanings of (most of) its on-air personalities, you can’t argue with these results. FNC more than doubles MSNBC’s nightly viewership and more than triples CNN’s. Good luck to you, Mark Thompson.