Friday’s Numbers…
FNC had the largest audience for the hurricane as it approached landfall. O’Reilly, as usual, was huge with 4,000,000 plus viewers. CNN came in a solid, yet distant (by more than 1,000,000 viewers in Prime Time) second. MSNBC struggled. It only broke 1,000,000 viewers during Rita Cosby’s show. And this is the same network with the same lineup that did so well with the Airbus News Flash a few days earlier. What changed viewers’ minds so?
Total Day P2
FNC 2,684,000
CNN 1,886,000
MSNBC 681,000
HLN 331,000
CNBC 169,000
Total Day P25-54
FNC 1,077,000
CNN 784,000
MSNBC 316,000
HLN 142,000
CNBC 63,000
Prime Time P2
FNC 3,826,000
CNN 2,813,000
MSNBC 1,036,000
HLN 656,000
CNBC 175,000
Prime Time P25-54
FNC 1,514,000
CNN 1,132,000
MSNBC 551,000
HLN 263,000
CNBC 93,000
7pm
Fox Report 3,426,000
Anderson Cooper 2,292,000
Hardball 676,000
Showbiz Tonight 225,000
8pm
O’Reilly 4,145,000
Paula Zahn Now 2,478,000
Countdown 919,000
Nancy Grace 650,000
9pm
Hannity & Colmes 3,607,000
Larry King Live 2,924,000
Rita Cosby 1,063,000
Prime News Tonight 691,000
10pm
On The Record 3,725,000
NewsNight 3,036,000
Scarborough Country 1,126,000
Nancy Grace (r) 628,000
11pm
On The Record 3,691,000
Newsnight 3,051,000
Scarborough Country 897,000
Showbiz Tonight (r) 243,000 viewers
” What changed viewers’ minds so? ”
Because they realized how much MSNBC’s coverage sucked compared to CNN and FOX. Honestly, they just didn’t put much effort into it IMO (at least as much as they could/should have). I think as soon as Rita ticked down to a Cat 3 storm, MSNBC immediately realized that it wasn’t gonna be a big story a la Katrina, and subsequently scaled back their coverage (this was VERY evident on Saturday, the day AFTER the storm hit, when they weren’t even live after 8 or 9 pm EST.)
Comment by Reader — September 26, 2005 @ 7:35 pm
That was more or less a rhetorical question.
Comment by Spud — September 26, 2005 @ 7:38 pm
I think he/she is still right though..MSNBC kinda dropped the ball on this one…I guess they didn’t see the ratings for this storm.
Comment by Anonymous — September 26, 2005 @ 7:39 pm
You said MSNBC only broke 1 million during Rita…did you even bother to look at:
10pm
On The Record 3,725,000
NewsNight 3,036,000
Scarborough Country 1,126,000
Nancy Grace (r) 628,000
The last time I checked, Scarborough is an MSNBC show :P
Comment by Anonymous — September 26, 2005 @ 7:48 pm
I am amazed that Rita C gets any ratings at all after reading about all the stupid stuff she has been saying i.e., 50 ft waves, the hurricane was named after her, she’s covered over 30 stories on hurricanes, yada yada. She is an embarassment, or should be.
Comment by Sophia — September 26, 2005 @ 8:31 pm
Rita C really is an embarrassment. The Situation wasn’t getting the ratings, but at least Tucker had some integrity, apparently MSNBC corporate does not.
Comment by Rick S — September 26, 2005 @ 9:07 pm
When will fnc and msnbc learn talking heads don’t need to be covering news? Hire some journalists to do the job.
Comment by Anonymous — September 26, 2005 @ 9:12 pm
CNN’s top journalist, their journalist who gets the highest ratings and the most money from CNN, referred to as a “journalist” by Jonathan Klein in my hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times, is Larry King. There’s nothing else to say.
Comment by Gregg — September 26, 2005 @ 10:43 pm
I like Larry King, he was very good geust acting in the Exorcist III, Dave, Bulworth, Mad City, Pink Nights, Ghostbusters and Eddie and the Cruisers II. I also like him as a journalist. He’s very hard hitting and never gets things wrong, like the names of the entire cast of Friends for a full hour. He’s a really good “journalist”.
Comment by Phil — September 26, 2005 @ 10:52 pm
Phil, I saw that! He called all the actors by the wrong names the entire hour. It was as if he was totally high or something. And do you remember when he was trying to give out his Web site address at the end of the show and he couldn’t get it right. He actually said “CNN period com” instead of CNN dot com.
Comment by Roxxy — September 26, 2005 @ 10:54 pm
Wow NewsNight on CNN was AMAZINGLY strong…it beat even LKL.
Comment by Anonymous — September 26, 2005 @ 10:55 pm
CNN’s top journalist is Larry King. Their top dog after that is Nancy Grace. It’s very funny. And I’m sure anonymous is going to jump in and slice me top pieces for writing this, but they’re kind of a joke at this point.
Okay, anonymous, go to work on me.
Comment by Steve — September 26, 2005 @ 11:00 pm
NewsNight is the #1 journalistic show in cable news. Not counting any of the CNNI stuff, it’s definitely the best form of true journalism on either CNN, FNC, or MSNBC. Aaron Brown actually covers the news. The News with Brian Williams used to be a really good one on MSNBC, but obviously he’s moved on to better things.
Comment by AnonymousHere — September 26, 2005 @ 11:03 pm
Someone mentioned talking heads. It frosts me to no end that they replaced the originally scheduled co-hosting twosome of Donna Fiducia and Gregg Jarrett with Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes (that was this past Friday night at 9:00 PM Pacific Time). Here we see an all too rarely seen talent in Donna getting shafted out of co-hosting a big event. It did not help that for the two-hour slot that followed, the originally scheduled anchor team of Uma Pemmaraju and Bob Sellers were dumped for Jamie Colby and Rick Folbaum. It is apparent that the suits ot Fox News have NO apreciation for Uma’s or Donna’s talents. Apparently, they don’t appeal to the semi-literate NASCAR fans. I may sound bitter, well, hell, I sure as hell am!
Comment by Bob — September 26, 2005 @ 11:10 pm
Roxxy dear, you really are an idiot if you’re going to shoot off at Larry King for substituting dot for period. Clutching at straws again? Do us a favor, stick your head in a bucket of cold water and don’t bring it out until you are actually capable of finding something worthwhile to complain about. How about some hosts passing off commentary as journalism? Where’s you condemnation of that?
Comment by Fair — September 27, 2005 @ 5:22 am
Anyone thats on tv and gives out a web address with “period” instead of “dot” is seriously OUT OF TOUCH with the internet. I know LKL is nothing but a softball pitcher anyways. So, it doesn’t really matter what he says anymore. And he usually doesn’t even know much about the subject he’s talking about. Which makes “the most trusted name in news” look all the more feeble. CNN is touting “Pipeline” as the next best thing since sliced bread. But, the highest rated host doesn’t know how to give out a web address? What does that tell you? There is a vast disconnect between LKL and the key demo!
Comment by Terance — September 27, 2005 @ 10:00 am
#14–the reasoning behind that is the no names will not bring in the #’s. So they bring on the political talking heads to do ‘news’. So who would you trust? Talking political pundits or journalists with years of experience covering news? For me it’s not political pundits.
Comment by Anonymous — September 27, 2005 @ 10:17 am
It’s good to know that CNN has been working up to its status of completely unaware for years now.
Comment by Mark — September 27, 2005 @ 12:52 pm
Larry King, CNN’s top journalist, did a great cross dressing bartender in the Shrek sequel. CNN’s top journalist or the drag queen bartender….I think the latter would be more interesting on CNN, that’s for sure.
Comment by AD — September 27, 2005 @ 1:06 pm
Sorry to correct you Spud, but Nancy Grace was live at 10 on Friday night. Was LKL live at 11?
Comment by Anonymous — September 27, 2005 @ 3:02 pm
They can shuffle anyone in at any time, live, taped, on CNN period com, it doesn’t matter. Shuffle, stretch, call category 3 hurricanes category 4’s, put in Dan Rather, take out Costas, put Costas back in, shuffle HLN anchors to weekend mornings, give Wolf BLitzer 3 hours a day, hire former HLN anchors for CNN weekend mornings, electrocute anchors on air with stun guns, put people in wind machines,take out Dobbs repeats at 11pm, put Miles in a hurricane, put Kleenex Cooper on 24 hours a day, whatever.
It doesn’t work.
Comment by Gene — September 27, 2005 @ 6:47 pm
CNN needs it’s HLN anchors i.e. Nancy Grace, to save it’s struggling programs.
Comment by Anonymous — September 27, 2005 @ 7:04 pm