CNN, meanwhile, is never stronger than when it can flex its news muscles. And Fox News always wins.

One other trend was noticeable in May: Covering a sex-drenched trial wall to wall is exactly why HLN is in business.

The news ratings for May, which was packed with events that played extremely well on television — the freeing of three kidnapped women in Cleveland, the deadly tornado in Moore, Okla., and, for HLN especially, the Jodi Arias murder trial and conviction — were clearly helped by the public interest in those events.

The prime-time ratings for CNN, for example, jumped 97 percent among the viewers it makes money on — those ages 25 to 54, whom news advertisers seek to reach; among all viewers, the increase was still 70 percent. Those improvements came in comparison to the same month a year ago, when CNN was experiencing some of the worst ratings in its history, so some of that climb is attributable simply to reversing a historically bad trend.

But CNN has clearly taken advantage of its continuing appeal to viewers who come to the television when big news is breaking. May represents the second consecutive month when CNN was able to overtake MSNBC among both those valued viewers and total viewers. It was the first time that CNN finished ahead of MSNBC two months in a row in those categories since June 2009.

Even worse for MSNBC, it actually finished fourth in May, trailing HLN and the blanket Jodi Arias coverage. In prime time, HLN averaged 624,000 total viewers — up 91 percent from last year; the 209,000 viewers in the 25-to-54 group represented an increase of 97 percent.

That compared to only 539,000 total viewers for MSNBC, down 20 percent, and 175,000 in the advertiser-preferred group, down 19 percent.

CNN, meanwhile, had 660,000 total viewers in prime time and 225,000 in the 25-to-54 category.

Fox News also had a strong month in total viewership, adding to its traditionally huge edge, with nearly two million viewers in prime time, almost 300,000 more than last year, a 17 percent increase. Somewhat surprisingly, Fox News was still down in the younger-viewer category. Fox dropped 6 percent among the 25-to-54 viewers to 308,000 — easily a winning total.

Individually, MSNBC’s hosts suffered striking ratings declines. MSNBC’s biggest star, Rachel Maddow, fell sharply to one of her lowest performances since she joined the network in 2008. She was off by 21 percent in total viewers and 22 percent in the 25-to-54 group. She trailed Piers Morgan of CNN in both categories: he was up 79 percent in viewers, and 101 percent in the advertiser-preferred viewers. (Even bigger increases went to Anderson Cooper’s 8 p.m. show: up 99 percent in total viewers and 119 percent in the important age category.)

Ms. Maddow was certainly not helped by the change MSNBC made in her lead-in. The new 8 p.m. show on MSNBC, hosted by Chris Hayes, had a precipitous falloff of 32 percent in total viewers from the former occupant at that hour, “The Ed Show,” a year ago. Mr. Hayes’s drop among the 25-to-54 viewers was less severe, 13 percent.

Of course, the dominant individual host in prime time remained Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, whose numbers, just under three million total viewers and 438,000 in the younger viewer category, were not approached by any other host on any network.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/business/media/month-of-breaking-news-lifts-cnn-and-fox-but-sinks-msnbc.html?partner=rss&emc=rss