With the George Zimmerman trial over, viewership as a whole dipped on the cable news channels. Not even a Royal baby was enough to drive people to cable news in numbers comparable to the previous few weeks.
While CNN and HLN saw turbo-boosted ratings during the Zimmerman trial (the Asiana plane crash also occurred during that time), both channels fell afterward, with CNN dropping -32% and HLN dropping -50%. Fox News Channel–which actually lost some viewers in total day during the Zimmerman trial–never gave up the top slot among the cable news channels, but last week and this week has been back to its more typical ratings, topping its competitors combined in the primetime demo. That said, it also lost viewers, falling -2%. MSNBC also fell by -7%, almost exactly the same as the bump it saw during the trial.
Fox News placed fourth in primetime among ad-supported cable channels last week, and fifth in total day. CNN placed 36th in primetime and 31st in total day, while MSNBC placed 32nd in both categories.