Cable TV News Sees Sharp November Viewing Spike From Impeachment Programming

Cable TV news networks posted general overall viewership gains in November, as impeachment hearings and other news programming heightened viewers' interest.

Fox News Channel boosted its prime-time viewing lead by 15% versus the same month the year before to 2.8 million prime-time viewers, while MSNBC was up 12% to 2.1 million. At the same time, CNN slipped 11% to 1.0 million viewers.

These viewership results come from Nielsen-measured live program-plus-seven days of time-shifted and live program-plus-same day time-shifted viewing for the most recent weeks.

Total day viewership showed similar results, with Fox News gaining 8% to 1.6 million, while MSNBC was up 18% to 1.2 million and CNN was flat at 760,000.

November 2019 viewership also grew at Fox and MSNBC in prime-time sequentially.

In October of this year, Fox had  2.7 million viewers, and MSNBC came in at 2.0 million, while CNN had 1.2 million viewers.

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Cable TV news networks have gradually risen over the last several months following a general softening in the middle of the year after the Mueller special counsel investigation ended in March.

In November, for the key news viewer 25-54 demographic that TV news advertisers seek, Fox was down 12% to 420,000, while MSNBC was up 12% to 352,000 and CNN lost 36% to 239,000.

In terms of viewing results for November top shows, Fox News’ “Hannity” came in at 3.6 million, followed by Fox's "Tucker Carlson Tonight" at 3.4 million, MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show" at 3.2 million, Fox's "The Five" at 3.0 million and Fox's "The Ingraham Angle" at 2.8 million.

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