The second quarter of 2013 cemented the recent ratings trends in cable news, with CNN rising and MSNBC falling, while Fox News continued its overall dominance.
But within those quarterly reports was the news that in June Fox News scored its lowest ratings since August 2001 among the viewers news advertisers most want to reach, the 25-to-54 age group. The network may be trying to address this issue with its decision to elevate one of its rising stars, Megyn Kelly, to a prime-time slot as soon as she returns from a planned maternity leave in the next few months. Fox made that expected promotion official on Tuesday.
Fox did not announce a specific show for Ms. Kelly or whose place she would be taking in the network’s prime-time lineup. However, speculation has centered on Greta Van Susteren, the 10 p.m. anchor. Ms. Van Susteren recently signed an extension of her Fox contract but her future role is not certain at this point.
Her husband, John Coale, said in an interview with The Times in May that she would be willing to move to an earlier hour. Several Web sites, including Mediaite, reported this week that Ms. Van Susteren had held talks with CNN, seeking a job at that network. A CNN executive confirmed Tuesday that those talks had taken place.
Fox News also announced on Tuesday that it had extended the contracts of all its evening and prime-time anchors: Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Bret Baier and Shepard Smith.
All those men continued to pile up huge advantages over their competitors in terms of total viewers in the second quarter, as did Fox News, which was up 12 percent in total day ratings and 3 percent in the Monday through Friday prime-time ratings.
But Fox News did show declines among viewers between 25 and 54, the group that accounts for the bulk of ad revenue for news networks. For the quarter, Fox was down 6 percent in total day ratings in that category and 12 percent in the prime-time hours.
The second quarter proved a boon to CNN, which capitalized on a spate of big news during the last three months — including the Boston Marathon bombings — to post sizable ratings increases across the board, even as MSNBC was suffering significant losses. CNN finished ahead of MSNBC for a full quarter in prime time in both total viewers and in the 25-54 group for the first time since 2009.
In total day numbers, CNN was up 49 percent in total viewers, to 475,000. That was ahead of MSNBC’s 360,000 (down 9 percent), though nowhere near Fox News, which averaged 1.2 million. However, in that advertiser-preferred group, CNN came much closer to the perennial leader, Fox News, with 161,000 viewers to Fox’s 238,000.
In the Monday-Friday prime-time competition, Fox News held a similar yawning advantage in total viewers with 2.2 million (up 3 percent) to CNN’s 733,000; CNN’s total represents a 56 percent increase from the previous year (when the network was setting records for low ratings). CNN easily topped MSNBC, which dropped to 660,000, down 19 percent.
Again, the prime-time gap between Fox News and CNN was much narrower in the 25-54 category — just 136,000 — as opposed to almost 1.5 million among total viewers. Fox News averaged 386,000 for the quarter in that advertiser-preferred group, down 12 percent, to CNN’s 250,000, up 76 percent. MSNBC dropped 14 percent to 196,000.
MSNBC’s biggest name, Rachel Maddow, suffered through her worst quarter among total viewers since coming on the air in 2008.
The last month of the quarter, June, seemed to be pointing to a slowdown in news, which affected all the networks. With no headline-grabbing events to drive the ratings, MSNBC regained second place over CNN for the month. Many of the individual news programs showed stark falloffs from last June, which was an intense month for political coverage in a presidential election year.
In June, Ms. Maddow, for example, was down 20 percent from a year ago in the 25-54 audience, to her worst performance ever; Mr. Hannity’s decline was even sharper, down 25 percent, reaching his lowest ratings in that category since August 2001. With an average prime-time audience in the 25-54 category of 317,000, Fox had reached its lowest monthly total since August 2001.
On CNN, Piers Morgan was about where he was a year ago, down 6 percent. That was the second-worst monthly performance for his show.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/03/business/media/megyn-kelly-to-get-prime-time-slot-on-fox-news.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.