• by Wayne Friedman , July 20, 2016

Second-night TV coverage of the Republican Convention gave big results to Fox News Channel. But CNN, NBC, and MSNBC also touted positive gains.

For the second night of coverage, Fox led in the three-hour prime-time coverage -- posting a Nielsen 4.8 million viewers with CNN at 2.8 million and MSNBC at 1.5 million.

Rankings for the cable network were the same in the key TV news demographic, adults 25-54: Fox, 1.0 million; CNN, 816,000; and MSNBC, 435,000.

Compared to the same day four years ago for the second night of the GOP Convention, CNN more than doubled its total viewer results, up 150% (from 1.115 million viewers in 2012); Fox News was down 20% (from 5.8 million viewers); MSNBC, was up 18% (from 1.299 million viewers).

For the broadcasters during the 10 p.m. hour, NBC was tops at 4.7 million viewers followed by CBS at 2.5 million; and ABC with 2.3 million. Still, Fox News beat all networks -- cable or broadcast -- in that hour for all viewers, averaging 5.3 million. CNN was in third place with 3.1 million viewers.

But among key 25-54 news viewers, NBC in that hour was easily the tops for all networks, averaging, 1.56 million to Fox News’ 1.17 million.