White House Correspondents Insider

Behind the scenes of the most powerful city in the world — Washington, D.C. — and those who cover it.

News Network Ratings Thrive in Age of Trump

By

Photo courtesy Pixabay.

Cable news continues to thrive during the Trump administration, with all three major networks showing healthy ratings last month.

Fox News ended the month of October as the most-watched basic cable network overall, coming in first with both total day and prime time viewers.  Fox had lost the top slot in prime time recently to sports network ESPN, although the network has continued to hold the most total day ratings for eight weeks in a row.  Five of the channel’s programs also were listed in the top 10 cable telecasts in total viewers, including Tucker Carlson Tonight, Hannity, and newly-added The Ingraham Angle.

MSNBC came in at third place among total viewers in basic cable for the week, behind Fox News and ESPN.  Measuring total day viewers, the news network was in second place among all networks, only behind competitor news channel Fox News.  The network had two shows in the top ten total viewed programs: The Rachel Maddow Show coming in third place and Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell in eighth place.

CNN also earned healthy ratings, landing in 10th place for the top ten basic cable networks for prime time viewers.  Among total day, CNN lept to sixth place in the top ten ratings.  CNN had no programs in the top ten most viewed shows, where the network’s most-watched program, Anderson Cooper 360 coming in 25th in total viewers.  (The show ranked 11th among viewers in the critical 25-54 year old demographic.)

Even so, all three cable news networks have witnessed varying declines in net primetime viewers for the month of October compared to 2016, the final full month of the presidential year election campaign.  Fox News saw a 28% decline in total viewers over last year, and CNN down 52%.  MSNBC fared best in the yearly comparison, only declining 6%.

 

U.S. Adults Spend Half Their Day Consuming Media

By

Photo courtesy Pixabay.

A study released by eMarketer reveals that people in the U.S. currently spend more than half their day consuming media – 12 hours, one minute spent with major media every day.

In the study, “US Time Spent with Media,” eMarketer measured every minute of daily media consumption across platforms.  Simultaneous usage of two or more media devices – such as watching television while utilizing a smartphone – counted individually toward the total.  Thus, total media consumption time continued to grow, even as the number of minutes in a day remained the same.

“Multitasking via mobile is primarily responsible for the overall increase in time spent with media. Consumers are spending more of their time on mobile devices conducting attention-heavy activities like video viewing and mobile gaming, but also with less visual activities like audio listening that enable continuous media intake,” stated eMarketer in a release accompanying the study.

Television remains the most-used means of consuming media for U.S. adults, with 3 hours, 58 minutes of use each day.  And with the rise of mobile, even with multitasking, that figure is down seven minutes from 2016, and below their forecast for this year at 4 hours, 19 minutes.

‘Fox & Friends’ Expands Morning Broadcast to Five Hours

By

Fox News building on 6th Avenue in NYC. Photo courtesy Jim Henderson via Wikimedia Commons.

The morning news program “Fox & Friends”, a favorite of President Donald Trump, will expand its broadcast to five hours each weekday, Fox News announced Wednesday.

“As FOX & Friends continues to mark its most-watched year in network history, we are thrilled to give our viewers more of the morning franchise they love,” revealed Fox News president of programming Suzanne Scott.

Adding an additional hour at 4AM EST, “Fox & Friends First” will be hosted by Heather Childers.  Beginning at 5AM EST, Jilian Mele and Rob Schmitt will take over.  Once 6AM hits and until the 9AM end of the program, Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade will co-host for the remainder of the morning.

According to data provided by AdWeek, Fox & Friends is on pace to have its best rated year in its 19 year history, delivering 1.5 million total viewers.

Also, with this morning lineup addition, Fox News now has more women anchoring and hosting programs than its cable news competition during weekdays.

NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ Most Watched Sunday Morning News Show

By

NBC International Information Bureau. Photo courtesy Jeff Maurone via Flickr.

NBC News’ Meet the Press with Chuck Todd was the most-watched Sunday morning political and public affairs show throughout the past year.

According to the media site Adweek, the NBC news program averaged 3.66 million viewers for the season, besting second-place CBS’s Face the Nation at 3.62 million total viewers and third place ABC’s This Week at 3.23 million viewers.  Fox News Sunday received 1.54 million viewers, while data for Univision’s Al Punto was unavailable.

“I’d like to think viewers believe we are producing a show that’s less stuffy, more approachable, more relevant and intelligent,” show host Chuck Todd said. “I also think the efforts we have made to expand our footprint beyond Sunday mornings — in the forms of a weekday MSNBC show, a podcast and a film festival this November — have helped create more urgency and relevancy to our Sunday morning edition.”

Meet the Press is the longest-running show in the history of television, celebrating its 70th anniversary in November with a documentary film festival in collaboration with the American Film Institute.

Hannity Outperforms Maddow in First Head-to-Head Ratings Match-Up

By

Photo courtesy Pixabay.

In their first 9PM showdown Monday night, Fox News’ Sean Hannity bested MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in the battle for ratings.

According to data provided by Nielsen Media Research, Hannity received 3.3 million total viewers for his broadcast, making the program the most-watched show in all of basic cable.  Data suggests his show Hannity was also watched by 666,000 viewers in the critical advertising demographic between the ages of 25-54 years old.

Maddow delivered 2.7 million total viewers for her show in the same timeslot, finishing in second place.  The Rachel Maddow Show trailed Hannity by 610,000 viewers, and was also behind with adults aged 25-54 with 591,000 viewers.

Significantly, Maddow finishes the third quarter as the highest-rated program in cable news overall.  This marks the first time any MSNBC program has finished a quarter as the top cable news show.

Much of the growth associated with the three main cable news networks throughout 2016 seems to have slowed.  MSBNC remains the only network to see a year-over-year improvement in the third quarter, with viewership increasing by 43 percent, including a 29 percent increase in the 25-54 demographic.  However, Fox News remains the top network in basic cable, beating both MSNBC and CNN for the 63rd consecutive quarter.