MSNBC’s Rising Ratings Are “Almost Incredible,” Schonfeld Says

“The big news of 2006 is the ascent of MSNBC; it’s now a real competitor in the 24-hour news race,” Reese Schonfeld writes in his recap of cable news ratings. “Last year MSNBC averaged 385,000 viewers in primetime. But averaging masks true gains because MSNBC was adding viewers throughout the year and finished with far more viewers than its yearly average.

The week of January 1st MSNBC had 550,000 viewers almost 200,000 more than they had averaged last year. They’ve almost doubled their viewers since the beginning of ’06 thanks to Keith Olbermann and lately Joe Scarborough. Those numbers are almost incredible and I can’t think of any other cable network that’s had that big an upswing in that amount of time.” Here’s the rest (via ICN)…

> Related: In the first week of 2007, MSNBC beat CNN in the 25-54 demo in primetime…