Hollywood Reporter
Republicans had reason to celebrate as returns came in for the 2014 midterm election, and plenty of viewers tuned in to Fox News Channel to watch the results. The No. 1 cable news network posted the night’s most-watched and highest-rated election coverage, topping even the broadcast networks.
Compared to the last four Tuesdays, FNC’s 1.516 million viewers in the core news demo of adults 25-54 was improved by 303 percent. CNN, which has been solidly in second place for the last six months, was up by 480 percent to 812,000. That left MSNBC in third. Coming off of a middling October, the net still surged 315 percent — albeit only netting 481,000 demo viewers.
The race for viewership was similarly spread. Fox News Channel boasted a whopping average of 6.3 million viewers for all of primetime. Looking at 10 p.m. specifically, when each of the three broadcast networks with a news team also had devoted coverage, FNC topped runner-up CBS by a margin of more than 1 million viewers.
10 p.m. was the big hour, and across FNC, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC a gross average of 23 million viewers were watching to see how the big races went down.
Cable news’ ratings surge was still a far cry from the last midterm election in 2010. Both Fox News Channel and MSNBC saw dramatic drops from the last go-around, while CNN only fell by only 10. (And CNN, it should be noted, is currently dark for Dish Network subscribers thanks to a carriage dispute.)
See the full primetime breakdown below:
FNC: 6,310,000 viewers (1,662,000 adults 25-54)
CNN: 2,107,000 viewers (909,000 adults 25-54)
MSNBC: 1,687,000 viewers (525,000 adults 25-54)
