Fox News dominated election night coverage: ‘Averaged a whopping 10.3 million total viewers’

Fox News dominated the media dojo on Election Night, averaging over 10 million viewers during its primetime broadcast from 8:00 pm to 11:00 pm.

“Fox News Channel averaged a whopping 10.3 million total viewers during its ‘Democracy 2024’ primetime coverage, including 3.1 million in the advertiser-coveted 25-54 age demo, according to data from Nielsen Media research,” the network self-reported Wednesday.

“Additionally, FOX Broadcasting Network earned an average of 2 million viewers and FOX Business Network garnered 897,000, totaling roughly 13.6 million viewers across all FOX television platforms,” the reporting continued.

“FOX News dominated every aspect of this historic election cycle, from primary debates to town halls to being the only network to conduct interviews with all four candidates in both parties in a one-week span as Bret Baier helmed the most buzzed about interview of the race,” Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott said in a statement.

“I am extremely proud of our team’s commitment to delivering the top reporting and analysis to the largest and most politically diverse audience in news and once again beating every broadcast and cable network across the board,” she added.

Coming in second place for the first time ever was MSNBC.

“Comcast Corp.-owned MSNBC averaged 6 million viewers, beating CNN’s 5.1 million viewers,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “Warner Bros. Discovery-owned CNN lost nearly half of the 9.6 million people who watched during the 2020 presidential election.”

That’s a shame.

Overall, viewership was down from previous elections.

“Overall TV viewing of election coverage was down from 2020,” the Times reported. “Nielsen said 42.3 million viewers tuned into election coverage across 18 networks measured, dropping 25% from 2020. During that cycle, the outcome wasn’t called for days. Democrat Joe Biden eventually was declared the victor over then-incumbent Trump.”

“The declines are due to the the audience’s shift away from watching traditional TV, especially among viewers younger than 50, who have moved to streaming and social media for their news consumption. Cord-cutting has reduced the number of homes that cable news outlets reach,” according to the Times.

The same was true of Fox’s coverage, which dropped from a record high of 13.8 million total viewers in 2020. MSNBC’s coverage likewise dropped from a high of 7.3 million in the last election.

However, both networks did great online.

“Fox News said its digital sites had 47.2 million views between 6 p.m. and 3 a.m. Eastern time. MSNBC’s YouTube channel had its strongest day on record, with 30 million video views,” according to the Times.

Dovetailing back to TV, the broadcast networks were down as well.

“ABC averaged 5.7 million viewers, followed by NBC (5.5 million viewers), followed by CBS (3.6 million), the Fox broadcast network (2 million), Fox Business Network (897,000) and NewsNation (265,000), which also was carried on the CW Network,” the Times noted.

Media critics were quick to celebrate the corporate media’s slow demise.

Look:

Vivek Saxena

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