FOX beat CNN 2:1 in Total Day and nearly 2.5:1 in Prime Time. O’Reilly led the way with 2.6 million viewers. Anderson Cooper 360 was flat. Grace pulled back from her highs of the previous week. MSNBC had a decent night despite The Situation pulling down its average. Scarborough and Countdown both pulled in better than 350,000 and Hardball did better than 300,000.
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Here are the ratings for Sunday. FOX dominated doubling CNN in Total Day and tripling it in Primetime with At Large and Big Story Weekend turning in weeknight level numbers. MSNBC’s excellent Astronaut special, which again had no TV advertising until Friday, didn’t do much and couldn’t beat canned HLN broadcasting which averaged 250,000 viewers. More people tuned in for the Meet The Press repeat. Advertising MSNBC…advertising. MSNBC’s Hardball “Boots On The Ground” encore didn’t do any better than the first broadcast which makes ICN wonder if MSNBC has a military “credibility gap”. Though it did have to go up against FOX’s War Stories.
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All three channels turned their attention to the plane crash in Toronto. ICN doesn’t know yet who broke the story first…

John Gibson was on for FOX but they were also cutting in and out of a Global TV feed.

Chris Jansing and Milissa Rehberger were on MSNBC and several analysts phoned in including former NBC newsman and aviation expert Robert Hager.

Wolf Blitzer was on for CNN. Interesting that they aren’t running CNN International now but a Canadian feed. An ICN commentor says that Ed Henry was originally anchoring and then Wolf Blitzer took over and was joined by Miles O’Brien.

All three networks were showing the exact same shot from the exact same camera so what differentiated their coverage was their analysis. That is when they were covering it and not airing feeds. Both CNN and MSNBC cut to the CBC and CTV feeds for extended periods during their coverage.

At 6 pm EST, FOX dumped to Special Report and by 6:15, when ICN checked in, Brit Hume was talking about politics. On MSNBC Dan Abrams took over for his show but stayed on the story. CNN had Blitzer on still.

Update: ICN Commentors say that CNN was first with the news, followed by FOX and MSNBC in a photo finish.

Another big month for FOX News Channel. For the 43rd consecutive month FOX came in first place. On The Record with Greta Van Susteren was the big ratings winner in July, with a viewership increase of 58% to 2,158,000 viewers. This was the second month in a row she came in second behind The O’Reilly Factor.

FOX widened the gap between itself and CNN, an increase of 85% in Prime Time viewership since Jan 2005 and an increase of 46% in Total Day since Jan. 2005. FOX’s total advantage over CNN is 168% in Primetime and 127% in Total Day. FOX was up 28% in the Primetime Demo and up 9% in the Total Day Demo. Overall FOX had a 38% gain in Primetime viewership while CNN dropped 3% during Primetime. FOX now has the top 7 programs on Cable News as Larry King slipped behind FOX’s daytime programming to 8th.

MSNBC suffered an 11% drop in Primetime vs July 2004, probably mostly due to the ratings challenged The Situation. Headline News had a 96% gain in Primetime because of the juggernaut that is Nancy Grace.
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TVNewser says he’s hearing NBC News is facing a 50 million dollar cutback. ICN first blogged on the potential trouble NBC’s 600 million shortfall (at the time…it eventually wound up being 800 million) in projected ad rates issue back in June. Back then ICN suggested that NBC News would be targeted for cutbacks. 50 million is a large number though. What gets cut?
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Because ICN isn’t really about non-network cable TV we haven’t paid too much attention to Al Gore’s new channel Current. But here are some reviews for your perusal…

Linda Stasi in the New York Post…

Current is (or will be) largely viewer-produced television. And with some exceptions, it’s good — very, very good.

Chip Crews in the Washington Post (via Romenesko)

“Today is, like, a real exciting day for us,” a young man named Max Lugavere announced on the air yesterday morning, looking mighty pleased with himself. “It’s the first hour of the first day of Current TV.”

Lugavere was speaking of the new interactive cable TV channel and Web site, which was indeed launched yesterday by Board Chairman Al Gore & Co. And if the day’s excitement was lost on you, like, don’t sweat it. You may be demographically challenged — the channel is forthrightly aimed at the 18-to-34 set — or perhaps your household is one of the great majority in the Washington area in which Current TV is not a current attraction. (At the moment its local reach is limited to DirecTV customers.)

Johnny Dollar has video…

The Wall Street Journal’s Julia Angwin and Joe Flint frame the Lachlan Murdoch resignation from News Corp. story in terms of how it will impact the TV divisions. Lots of interesting stuff here…(via Romenesko)

Mr. Murdoch, the 33-year-old son of News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, was deputy chief operating officer in charge of overseeing the company’s 35 television stations. But issues over the station group’s day-to-day management were a big source of conflict between Lachlan and his father, triggering the younger Murdoch’s departure, say people familiar with the situation. Specifically, Lachlan often found himself out of the loop, in part because of the close relationship between the station group’s CEO, Jack Abernethy, and Fox News chief, Roger Ailes, a close confidant of the elder Mr. Murdoch.

The vacancy created by Lachlan Murdoch’s departure could set the stage for a power struggle between Mr. Ailes and another high-profile News Corp. executive, Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin. As chief operating officer, overseeing the TV and film operations, Mr. Chernin would seem to be the natural candidate to take control of the station group. But Mr. Ailes’ success at building the Fox News Channel into the leading 24-hour news channel has made him a favorite with Rupert Murdoch. A spokesman for News Corp. declined to comment.

Radio&Records.com noted today that Westwood One announced that Joe Scarborough’s radio show is going on hiatus and will be re-launched in January 2006. ICN is not sure how, if it all, this development will impact the ratings of his MSNBC show. Will more people tune in to see him now that he can’t be heard on radio? Or is the hiatus an indication of poor ratings which means that demand for Scarborough is on the wane which could signal a future downturn in his TV ratings?