It might be time to say goodbye to Fox News’s reign as the most watched cable TV news channel in the country. They had a four month streak at the number one spot, and before had only been knocked off for a short amount of time.
And you can call Trump’s federal indictment unfair, but it’s certainly going to get eyeballs. When there’s bad news about Trump, viewers have flocked to MSNBC, so the network will be sitting pretty as his two trials move along.
There’s a psychology among some moderate voters. Did Bud Light go way too far with Dylan Mulvaney? Go to Fox News for their expert take. Did Trump say something objectively offensive? Go to MSNBC to find an anchor to commiserate with.
Railing against something seems to draw more eyeballs than gloating about something.
This week sees improved ratings over MSNBC’s most recent time at top, following the 2022 midterms when the GOP faltered.
In fact, ratings even switched between the two networks, proving the point further. Fox was beating MSNBC in the leadup to the big midterm election. Fox News won election night, but there was a solid migration towards the end of it when it looked like the Dems had a surprisingly good night. And in the week that followed, MSNBC dominated the post-game coverage.
For prime time this past week, MSNBC took the number one spot with 1.52 million viewers, barely beating Fox News’s 1.5 million. CNN nabbed a paltry 677,000 viewers. MSNBC had been at number one only four times before. Their last time at the top pre midterms won’t come as a surprise. It was early February 2021, in the wake of the January 6 mess.
MSNBC has been unapologetically left, and it seems to be working.
Meanwhile, CNN’s efforts to tack to the middle aren’t working. They hired a new CEO, Chris Licht, who had outside experience as a late-night talk show producer. They canned Don Lemmon and gave a town hall to former President Donald Trump, drawing the ire of some key progressives. But after an internal staff revolt, Licht was shown the door.
Still, CNN will be doing their best to keep up, as they’ve seen themselves falling even below Newsmax on some Friday nights to the fourth place spot. Oprah bestie Gayle King and sports broadcasting legend Charles Barkley will be anchoring their flagship show in the fall. Barkley has famously criticized both parties and is not known to have that much of a partisan lean, indicating that CNN will be doubling down.
Will it work? We’ll keep watching so you don’t have to.
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