• by Wayne Friedman , September 4, 2013

Fox News Channel has easily retained its top viewership spot among all cable news networks in August -- with CNN the only network to make significant year-to-year gains for the month.

Fox earned 1.54 million total prime-time viewers -- down 15% from a year ago and 968,000 total daytime viewers, and off 10% from the previous period a year ago.

MSNBC retained its second-place spot -- despite losing big chunks of viewers a year ago, when it had a lot of high-rated Summer Olympic coverage. It had 520,000 total viewers and 348,000 total day viewers, down 36% and 28% respectively. Last year, MSNBC was the only cable news network to see higher ratings versus August 2011.

CNN was at 451,000 total viewers in prime time and 346,000 viewers in daytime, both up 6% versus the previous August. Its two-month-old daytime show “New Day” was up by double-digit percentage points in key viewer group categories. In prime time, “AC360″ was 16% higher in total viewers and up 15% among key 25-54 viewers.

CNN’s sister network HLN was mostly flat year to year -- slipping 1% to 308,000 total viewers in prime time and up 2% in total day viewers to 243,000. One of its key prime-time shows, “Nancy Grace,” was down 1% in total viewers and up 1% in the A25-54 demographic .