With Hurricane Ike causing serious damage, Gov. Sarah Palin’s final interview portion airing and a deadly train crash in L.A., Friday turned out to be one of the busy end to a newsy week.
MSNBC’s coverage during Hardball at 5pmET switched from politics to Ike, and the 6pmET Race and 7pmET Hardball were switched out for special coverage.
At 8pmET, with all the usual programming, The O’Reilly Factor, taped earlier in the evening, won the night in Total Viewers and was tops in the timeslot in the A25-54 demo. In 2nd place in the demo was Campbell Brown: Election Center. Countdown with Keith Olbermann was 4th in the demo, as it was slightly edged by Nancy Grace on HLN. In Total Viewers, Countdown was 2nd with Brown in 3rd and Grace 4th.
The highest rated hour of the night in the demo was FNC’s Ike coverage at 11pmET (with Shepard Smith anchoring). In all of prime time, FNC was tops in the demo and Total Viewers (where FNC beat CNN and MSNBC combined).