Yesterday Hurricane Isaac swept through Louisiana, Missisisppi and other parts of the southeastern U.S., and people were still tuning in to TV get their weather fix Wednesday, even with the RNC going on.
Fox News, which has been dominant in the ratings during the RNC, was number one in total day and primetime, in both total viewers and the adults 25-54. While the bulk of FNC’s coverage was focused on the RNC, it had extensive reports on Hurricane Isaac, most notbaly from Shepard Smith, who was in New Orleans and Mississippi yesterday. During Smith’s hours at 3 and 7 PM–when his coverage was focused on Isaac and not the RNC–FNC handily topped every other network in total viewers, including Weather Channel.
The Weather Channel, which always sees strong ratings growth whenever there is severe weather events, placed number two in total viewers and the demo in total day, and was third in total viewers and second in the demo in primetime. Yesterday Weather was number two across the board, except fore the demo in total day, when it topped all of the cable news channels.
The numbers:
Total day:
FNC: 2.44 million total viewers, 570,000 A25-54
TWC: 1.19 million total viewers, 462,000 A25-54
MSNBC: 724,000 total viewers, 201,000 A25-54
CNN: 677,000 total viewers, 207,000 A25-54
Primetime:
Fox News: 5.86 million total viewers, 1.42 million A25-54
MSNBC: 1.30 million total viewers, 367,000 A25-54
TWC: 1.25 million total viewers, 545,000 A25-54
CNN: 1.12 million total viewers, 342,000 A25-54.