• Mediaweek, Monday, August 9, 2010 10:52 PM

Fox News Channel is a force to be reckoned with in cable TV. So why does the network continually get its digital clock cleaned-by CNN, of all rivals? Millions of Americans turning to the Web for more of their news on a more frequent and immediate basis, eroding Fox's influence.

Foxnews.com averages around 12 million or 13 million monthly unique users, according to Nielsen Online, rarely approaching the 35 million to 40 million uniques that leaders Yahoo News, MSNBC and CNN regularly deliver in aggregate. Some of that disparity can be explained away, as both Yahoo and MSNBC draw heavy traffic from their portal counterparts, and CNN benefits from traffic driven by CNNMoney.com and Sports Illustrated's site.

But even on its own, CNN.com consistently beats Foxnews.com by 7 million or 8 million unique users. Per comScore, the gap is even larger: 43.4 million uniques for CNN.com in June vs. 11.4 million for Foxnews.com. Plus, CNN.com regularly bests Foxnews.com in measures like page views, time spent and video streams-and it has opened an early lead in mobile (14 million uniques vs. 9 million in May for Fox, per Nielsen).

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