Only 5 Cable Nets Record November Ratings Hike, MSNBC Beats Fox

Just five of the 25 cable networks -- and no major broadcast networks -- posted ratings hikes among the key demographic that TV advertisers still buy. Overall, November was down 13% for broadcast and cable.

A&E Network, Hallmark Channel, History, MSNBC and Freeform were the five cable networks that showed gains in Nielsen’s November C3 total day 18-49 demographic ratings, according to MoffettNathanson Research analysis. MTV was flat for the month.

Among the cable network losers, Fox News Channel, Nick-at-Nite, Nickelodeon, Adult Swim and TBS experienced the largest absolute declines in November, losing 55,000 and 105,000 in C3 total day 18-49 viewers.

C3 is the average commercial minute ratings plus three days of time-shifted viewing.

According to TV analysts, about half of all upfront deals made by national TV advertising for an entire TV season are pegged to C3 ratings, with the remainder going to C7.

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Both total day and prime-time C3 viewership each sank 13% to 14 million and 23.8 million, respectively. In prime time, broadcast was down 16% (to 8.3 million); and cable, losing 11% (to 15.5 million).

NBC fared the best of the worse when it comes to prime-time broadcast programming -- down 11% to average 2.88 million C3 18-49 viewers; Fox going backwards 31% to 2.27 million; CBS, gave back 15% to 1.59 million; and ABC, off 13% to 1.58 million.

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