• by Wayne Friedman , June 18, 2015

The embattled former “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams now moves to MSNBC amid stronger competition from CNN and Fox News.

MSNBC’s nearest competitor CNN has made major particularly strong gains in recent months.

For example, in May CNN was up 41% to a Nielsen-measured total day, total viewer average of 440,000. Fox News not only continues to maintain its dominating leadership, but it also improved in the month, adding 9% to 987,000 total average viewers.

Meanwhile, MSNBC continues to struggle -- down 9% for the May period to 301,000 average total day viewers. Even CNN sister network HLN has closed the gap on MSNBC -- gaining 6% in May to 256,000 total average daytime viewers.

Prime-time results don’t offer any better news for MSNBC -- it was down 14% to 470,000 total average viewers, putting it in third place to CNN, which was up a strong 42% to 587,000.

Fox remains well ahead, totaling more prime-time viewers than all other cable news networks combined. Fox gained 10% in the May to land at 1.64 million viewers.

Although Time Warner’s other news network, HLN, gained in total day viewership, it was down 9% in prime-time viewership to 292,000.

On Thursday, NBC decided to move the suspended Williams to MSNBC, leaving his post officially as anchor of “NBC Nightly News”; Lester Holt will now take over “Nightly News” as the show’s permanent anchor.

Williams was originally suspended after admitting to falsely claiming he had been in a helicopter that had been hit by enemy fire during the Iraq War.