Reese Schoonfeld's Blog - Headed CNN for Ted at the start
I’ve stuck to my word—no detailed breakdown for the past three weeks. The reason? I think the news market share is cast in lead if not in stone. Fox and CNN continue to get about 80% of the rating in prime time and 77% total day. Here’s the way it broke down for the last four weeks:
Prime Time
FoxNews 48.9%
CNN 32.5%
MSNBC 11.2%
Headline News 7.3%
Total Day
FoxNews 47.5%
CNN 28.5%
MSNBC 13.1%
Headline News 10.9%
Analysis:
I am surprised that CNN continues to lag in total day. It no longer claims 30% of the audience. CNN holds onto its recent prime time numbers but it did 3 or 4 points better when Connie Chung was around. MSNBC has picked up a point in prime, Headline News has lost a point, but as suggested above, I can’t see any reason that market share is likely to change in the foreseeable future. The next one of these will cover the upcoming five weeks and from now on, it’ll be four weeks, then five weeks, which should bring us through the year with a once a month analysis. Once a month numbers may not vary and then we’ll switch to quarterly.
P.S. FoxNews once again made the top ten in total viewers. For the week of December 8-14, Fox was 10th in prime time and 7th in total day viewers. News viewing was way up thanks to the Saddam capture. 34% more viewing in total day, 21% more in prime time.
The Hussein Weekend
Saddam was captured last Sunday so comes the inevitable question; which of the cable networks won the most viewers for the event. The news broke around 5:00 a.m. Between 5:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m., FoxNews averaged 2,947,000 viewers per quarter hour. CNN registered 2,679,000 and MSNBC 846,000. I do not have Headline’s numbers and it may be that if they’re added in, the combined CNN total edged Fox but one on one, Fox vs. CNN, Fox won by about 10%. MSNBC had less than one-third as many viewers as Fox or CNN.
Total day Fox averaged 2,318,000 viewers, CNN 1,969,000, and MSNBC 677,000. That's Fox almost four to one better than MSNBC and CNN almost three times better. FoxNews is 15% up on CNN for total day. Again, adding Headline News might make a difference.
In prime, Fox averaged 2,575,000 viewers, CNN 1,910,000 viewers, and MSNBC 440,000 viewers. So, Fox was more than 20% ahead of CNN in prime with six times as many viewers as MSNBC and CNN had almost five times as many viewers as MSNBC.
MSNBC’s prime time performance was so dismal that it actually had fewer viewers this year than it had on the same Sunday a year ago. From 5:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., it was up 187% from last year. For the same period, Fox was up 515% and CNN was up 558%. MSNBC is not in the same class with its two competitors which brings me to an interesting and important postscript:
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