June #’s: Pre-Olympic Ratings For Hardball

> Update: 3:04pm: “Maybe CNN should pay more attention to the fact that their primetime audience is down by 18% in the demo, while MSNBC is up 19%,” an MSNBC spokesperson retorts. “Oh, did I mention that Hardball is up 33% in the demo this quarter?”

Back in February, when Hardball beat The Situation Room in the 25-54 demo, CNN swore it was just an Olympic bounce. They said Wolf Blitzer would beat Chris Matthews again once the sports boost subsided. Based on June’s ratings, they were right: Hardball is back to pre-Olympic levels. CNN created this chart to show the monthly trend. Click it to view full-size:



Still, in the second quarter, Hardball is up 33 percent in the demo compared to Q2 2005. CNN is up 8 percent and FNC is down 16 percent. Among total viewers, MSNBC is up 27 percent, CNN is up 13 percent, and FNC is down 4 percent at 7pm…