Nielsen Investigates Megyn Kelly Ratings Surge, Confirms Numbers

By Alex Weprin 

Late last week MSNBC president Phil Griffin quipped that the ratings for Megyn Kelly’s Fox News show on the Tuesday of her debut week were “impossible.”

“Monday we had a really good day in the key demographic, on the night that Fox News debuted their three shows, we either tied or beat them in those hours,” Griffin said. “Tuesday–you guys should be doing some investigations–I have never seen it in all my years of cable, same overnight, same everything, and they doubled their ratings in a day? It is impossible.”

Well, apparently Nielsen took the issue seriously, because they looked into Tuesday’s numbers. According to the Daily NewsDon Kaplan, “The investigation has revealed that the numbers for Kelly are accurate.”

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On her debut night, Kelly fell to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in the demo, but on Tuesday, her ratings more than doubled. As we speculated at the time, popular programming like “Monday Night Football” may have drawn a lot of attention Monday night, so the curiosity tune-in could have been delayed til Tuesday.

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