B&C’s Claire Atkinson writes about the growth of HLN, in viewers and advertisers, as the channel shows it is “a growing entrant in the opinion journalism field.”
The service which airs breaking news during the day and opinion and debate shows in primetime is averaging 571,000 viewers, up from 461,000 through October last year. And in the demo, HLN averages 221,000 up from 178,000.
HLN now has 100 million subscribers, up from 98.3 million last year.
Don Seaman, of media agency MPG tells Atkinson advertisers like the frequency of tune-in offered by news channels that tend toward the “bombastic.” HLN’s primetime lineup of Nancy Grace, Joy Behar and Jane Velez Mitchell are delivering bombast and viewership. HLN’s primetime (8-11pmET) regularly beats CNN in the A25-54 demo and occasionally tops MSNBC coming in a distant second to Fox News. And even in Total Day viewership, HLN is giving CNN and MSNBC a run. Last week, the network averaged 163K A25-54 viewers to CNN’s 162,800 and MSNBC’s 131,600.
“It’s the same people that go to Fox News and watch it all the time, and MSNBC is getting into that,” says Seaman. “When you take that into consideration, you’re getting a lot of frequency.”