CNN’s bad news, from Atlanta


28-10-2009

Many current headlines concern US cable news service Fox News, and whether owner Rupert Murdoch will persuade America’s cable systems to start paying for Fox News’ carriage. Murdoch can afford to be bold, because Fox News has beaten CNN into last place in the USA’s primetime network race for news channels.

Indeed, CNN has even been beaten by its own sibling, CNN Headline News, which achieved 3rd position (out of four), with CNN in 4th spot. Top was Fox News, while MSNBC came 2nd, according to data from ratings agency Nielson.


CNN averaged 201,000 viewers between the ages of 25 and 54 from 8pm to 11pm Monday to Friday during the measured October period, according to Nielsen. Fox News finished first with 688,000 viewers a night in that age group; MSNBC came in second with 252,000; and Headline News (HLN), also owned by Time Warner, averaged 220,000.


“As we have said for years, we measure our audience across all CNN Worldwide platforms and throughout the day, not just prime time,” CNN said today in an e-mailed statement. “CNN provides quality journalism and our ratings reflect the news environment more than opinion programming does - especially in prime time.”


CNN also said its networks top MSNBC in total-day viewers and that CNN.com leads the competition on the Internet. It averaged 142,000 viewers a day in October, including all time periods, among adults 25 to 54, while HLN drew 146,000 and MSNBC averaged 132,000, CNN said.