Cable TV viewership was down somewhat last week compared to prior weeks, perhaps owing to May sweeps on the broadcasters resulting in more people sticking to the channels lower down on the dial. The top two channels were entertainment channels TNT and USA, which had some big finales of their own. That said, cable news more than held its own, retaining strong ratings.
Fox News led the way as usual, placing 3rd among ad-supported cable channels in primetime and total day, and 4th among all channels. FNC averaged 2.04 million viewers in prime, and 1.31 million in total day. CNN continues to perform relatively strongly into May, placing 18th in primetime and 13th in total day (19th and 14th among all channels), and averaging 855,000 and 588,000 viewers, respectively.
HLN, bolstered by the culmination of the Jodi Arias trial, placed 28th in primetime and 19th in total day (29th and 20th among all channels), and averaging 627,000 and 497,000 viewers, respectively. MSNBC placed 34th in primetime and 32nd in total day (35th and 33rd among all channels), averaging 542,000 and 341,000 viewers, respectively.
For the business networks: CNBC placed 46th in primetime and 56th in total day, while Fox Business placed 88th in both prime and total day. Bloomberg TV is not rated by Nielsen, and hasn’t been since it launched. As for Current TV: Al Jazeera cannot come soon enough. It was dead last among all cable channels last week, well below Nielsen’s minimum accuracy threshold.
The full ranker: