• by Wayne Friedman , 3 hours ago

With just weeks left for the 2025-2026 TV season to end, Fox News Channel is the top channel with 2.5 million average viewers in primetime, according to Nielsen live airings, plus seven days of time-shifted viewing.

The time period looks at the data from September 22, 2025 through August 16, 2026.

ESPN was next at 1.7 million; then comes MS Now (1.1 million),  Home & Garden TV (723,000) and CNN (698,000).

Completing the top 10: TBS (641,000); Hallmark Channel (639,000); TLC (568,000); History (535,000); and USA Network (513,000).

Over that period, however, ESPN was the dominated leader when it comes to overall advertising revenue from all dayparts:

ESPN was at an estimated $2.6 billion in advertising revenue that came from 282,132 commercial airings, according to iSpot.

During that period, ESPN dominated both 25-54 and 18-49 demographics --- averaging 692,000 and 617,000 -- over all other cable TV networks.

Fox was in second place among 25-54 viewers: 237,000. TBS was second to ESPN in 18-49: 178.000. Fox was in third place, at 163,000.

Fox News Channel has been estimated to have pulled in $1.1 billion in advertising spend and 239,397 airings, according to iSpot.