The top of the Feb. 2018 basic cable rankings featured networks that aired live sports or news content.
Yes, Fox News and MSNBC continued to lead the way in terms of total viewers, but there was also NBCSN, which set monthly viewership records with coverage of the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, as well as TNT, which aired the highly-rated NBA All-Star Weekend, and 2018 NBA All-Star Game in prime time.
As we showed you in the monthly ratings reports, Fox News, despite remaining No. 1 by a substantial margin, posted year-over-year audience declines, while MSNBC was up from Feb. 2017.
NBCSN obviously posted year-over-year growth, as did Investigation Discovery in prime time (+6 percent). But similar to FNC, other top-rated prime time cable networks posted year-over-year losses, per Nielsen live-plus-same-day data. These include USA (-10 percent), HGTV (-16 percent) TNT (-3 percent), History (-14 percent), ESPN (-8 percent) and TBS (-20 percent).
Here’s a look at the basic cable top 10, followed by a larger list of basic cable network performance that’s ranked by total viewers.
Basic Cable Top 10 (Prime Time)
- Fox News (2,766,000)
- MSNBC (1,805,000)
- USA (1,366,000)
- HGTV (1,361,000)
- TNT (1,316,000)
- NBCSN (1,268,000)
- History (1,165,000)
- ESPN (1,124,000)
- Investigation Discovery (1,116,000)
- TBS (1,085,000)
Basic Cable Top 10 (Total Day)
- Fox News (1,548,000)
- MSNBC (989,000)
- Nickelodeon (926,000)
- HGTV (781,000)
- ID (771,000)
- NBCSN (757,000)
- CNN (700,000)
- USA (691,000)
- TNT (650,000)
- History (592,000)