• by Wayne Friedman , October 11, 2013

Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN may all have their distinct viewers -- but there is plenty of overlap.

A new study from the Pew Research Center says some 39% of CNN viewers also watched Fox News, while 38% also tuned to MSNBC. Among viewers of Fox News, 44% also watched CNN and 28% watched MSNBC. Among MSNBC viewers, 54% also watched CNN and 34% also went to Fox News.

All that may contribute to the overall higher saturation of cable TV networks during the day among cable TV news viewers. (Another factor is that cable TV news programming has more programming hours than other TV news platforms.)

Cable TV news viewers watch for more than an hour a day: 72.4 minutes a day on cable networks versus 31.6 minutes with network TV news and 21.8 minutes with local TV news.

Still, the data tells a different story. Three out of four U.S. adults (71%) watch local television news and 65% view network newscasts over the course of a month, according to Nielsen data from February 2013. Cable TV news channels register a 38% number.