Election night TV: Fox News leads ratings, but viewership is down 20% from 2016 race
The presidential race may not yet have a declared winner, but Fox News Channel easily took the TV ratings crown as all three major cable news networks attracted more viewers than the broadcast networks, according to final Nielsen ratings data for election night, when 56.9 million watched prime-time coverage on 21 networks.
But that figure was down 20% from the 71.4 million who watched prime-time results in 2016, Nielsen says.
Fox’s election-night coverage, anchored by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, won 14.1 million viewers during primetime Tuesday (8-11 p.m. EST), far ahead of second-place CNN (9.4 million) and MSNBC (7.6 million).
But, echoing the slow migration of news viewers to cable, all three bested broadcasters, led by ABC with 6.3 million viewers. NBC followed with 5.7 million; CBS averaged 4.5 million; and the Fox broadcast network (3 million). Both NBC and Fox offered coverage separate from their affiliated cable news networks. Figures for PBS, C-SPAN, Spanish-language broadcasters and others are not included.
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Fox News said its Tuesday performance marked the most-watched election night in cable news history. The cable news network also finished first among viewers in the key news demographic (ages 25 to 54) but finished second to CNN among younger adults (ages 18 to 34).
