January 25, 2023
TV News Viewership Expands, MSNBC's Numbers Soar
- by Wayne Friedman , September 21, 2017
National TV news viewing is still climbing year-to-date -- up 11%, although registering smaller gains in the most recent week.
For the most recent week ending September 17, the 38th week of the year, overall national TV news viewing grew by 5% on a Nielsen live-plus-same day basis among total viewers, according to Pivotal Research Group.
Viewing for the three biggest cable news networks continued to show major gains versus a year ago -- climbing 24% collectively.
MSNBC is the biggest beneficiary -- soaring 57% over a year ago. Fox News Channel viewing was 17% higher, and CNN has added 13%. Programming on the big three broadcast networks inched up 1% -- better than its 6% year-to-date decline.
Year to date, Fox now has a 30% share of all TV news viewing. All NBCUniversal news programming/networks -- including MSNBC -- are now at a 29% share. Time Warner -- including CNN -- is at a 20% share.
In the last findings, viewing share was down at CBS from 10% to 8%, but up at ABC, from 9% to 10%.
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In contrast to TV news viewing, TV sports viewing is now down 16% year-to-date. Taking out the high-rated Olympics of a year ago, total TV sports viewing is down 6%, according to Pivotal.
In 2016, news and sports TV viewing accounted for 22% of all national TV viewing.
Percent change stats , while worth noting as they may be predictive, do not tell you the size of the audience. Last time I looked, the Fox News Channel was leading MSNBC by about 30% in average commercial minute primetime viewers and held a 60% in the all daypart averages. This is much closer than the two were about 18 months ago and probably reflects a growing negative reaction to Trump's incrediblely poor performances. It should also serve as a warning sign to Fox that going all out in suport of the Trump-led GOP may be a dangerous strategy and the infusion of some strong and less biased personalities is in order, not Ann Coulter. Fox may be bannking on the assumption that liberal minded viewers, who are the primary MSNBC supporters, are fickle and may drop out if Trump cools it and the GOP starts acting responsively---and Fox may be right. But what if Trump keeps doing what he is doing and the GOP continues to fumble?Fox may go down with that ship.