A few interesting things I noticed about the cable ratings from Thursday’s night Iowa caucus coverage:
• At 7pmET Shepard Smith built on Brit Hume’s A25-54 viewers (from 322K at 6p to 344K at 7p) but Smith lost some of the Total Viewers (1.591M at 6p to 1.529M at 7p). CNN and MSNBC increased their Total Viewer and the demo averages from 6p to 7pET.
• At 8:30p FNC lost some of the Total Viewers who watched a special half hour O’Reilly Factor at 8pmET (from 2.641M at 8p to 2.307M at 8:30p). However, more younger viewers (A25-54) joined FNC’s coverage at 8:30 (from 608K average at 8p increasing to 659K average at 8:30p).
• At MidnightET, FNC’s pairing of Shepard Smith & Greta Van Susteren brought in the most viewers: 518K in demo/1.154M Total Viewers. Larry King on CNN came in second with 487K/1.072M and MSNBC came in third with 348K/776K. Not surprisingly, all three network lost viewers from 11pmET to Midnight.