CNN went “all in” with live coverage of a Donald Trump speech in Dubuque, Iowa Tuesday night, and viewers responded, with the network’s 7 p.m. ET hour, Erin Burnett OutFront seeing a significant jump in ratings according to Nielsen.
On Monday, OutFront (with Burnett on maternity leave) delivered 169,000 viewers in the key demo. (In the previous week, the 7 p.m. hour averaged between 150,000 and 202,000 viewers in the demo.) With half of Tuesday’s show devoted to live coverage of Trump’s speech, OutFront jumped to 320,000 viewers in the demo, behind Fox News Channel, which aired portions of the speech live during Greta Van Susteren‘s On the Record. (Fox won the hour in the demo with 371,000 viewers.)
MSNBC, which carried the speech uninterrupted until just after 8 p.m. ET, landed in third place, with 156,000 viewers in the demo. Overall in prime, Fox News dominated, with 2,679,000 total viewers, compared to CNN’s 869,000 and MSNBC’s 837,000.
At 8 p.m. ET, CNN’s continued coverage of the speech and Jorge Ramos/Donald Trump news conference dust-up pushed up ratings for AC360–which had 419,000 viewers in the demo and 1.3 million total viewers. Anderson Cooper’s Hurricane Katrina special scheduled for 9 p.m. was bumped for continue Trump/Ramos news. It will now air tonight.