Fox News Channel's prime-time viewing, with Tucker Carlson’s departure, took took a big hit in May: down 32% to 1.42 million Nielsen average viewers versus April’s results (2.07 million).
Still, the Fox Corp.-owned channel maintained the highest ratings among all cable news networks.
MSNBC's ratings moved closer to Fox's -- just 260,000 viewers behind -- to average 1.16 million total viewers, losing 12% of its prime-time viewers versus the previous month.
CNN lost 16% in viewing versus April to land at 416,000 viewers. These results included a highly rated Town Hall event featuring former President Trump.
At the same time, conservative news network Newsmax picked up viewers -- up 70% to 298,000 prime-time viewers.
Analysts say the channel benefited from the exit of Tucker Carlson, who left Fox News the last week in April. He averaged 3.1 million viewers that month -- the highest among all cable TV news programs.
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Behind Newsmax was Nexstar Media's “NewsNation” with 94,000 prime-time viewers, which averaged 101,000 in April.
Looking at total day numbers, Fox was also the highest. All three of the top networks lost ground versus a year ago, with Fox at 1.09 million, MSNBC at 736,000 and CNN coming in at 416,000.
The highest-rated prime-time cable news show for May was Fox's roundtable program “The Five,” which posted 2.63 million viewers.
Among all cable TV networks, Fox News Channel landed in third place overall for the month behind TNT and ESPN -- which gained the top two spots in prime-time for cable TV networks with 3.1 million and 2.5 million average viewers, respectively, largely due to high-profile game coverage of the NBA Playoffs.
Obscured by all this noise is a steady loss of cable viewership.