Sean Hannity Tops Cable News Ranking

He recently moved to the 9 p.m. time slot at Fox News.

November 1, 2017 10:07 am

Fox New’s Sean Hannity has ascended to the top of the cable news rankings, with 3.2 million viewers in October, beating Rachel Maddow and Tucker Carlson, reports The Associated Press.

When Bill O’Reilly was ousted from Fox News in April, the top person in cable television talk was up for grabs. MSNBC’s Maddow took that title during the end of the summer and had the highest viewership in July, August and September.

But this month, Maddow had 2.5 million viewers, the Nielsen company said, reports AP. Meanwhile, Carlson, who is also on Fox but an early time slot, had 2.8 million viewers.

Meanwhile, Laura Ingraham made a strong debut on Fox on Monday, reaching 3.27 million viewers at 10 p.m. She beat CNN and MSNBC in the time slot, AP reports.

The Dodgers-Astros World Series is averaging 16.1 million viewers through five games for Fox, Nielsen says, reports AP. The Astros won the fifth game during extra innings, and it was the most-watched game with nearly 19 million viewers. It doesn’t beat out last year’s Cubs-Indians series though, which averaged 23.6 million viewers, but that average was strengthened by the seventh game, which was seen by 40.5 million, making it the most-watched World Series game since 1991.

Baseball helped Fox get the win this week in prime time, with the network averaging 13.2 million viewers. CBS meanwhile had 7.8 million, NBC had 6.9 million, ABC had 4.5 million, Telemundo had 1.48 million, Univision had 1.47 million and the CW had 1.35 million and ION Television had 1.2 million, according to AP. 

Fox News Channel and ESPN were basically tied for the prime-time ratings for cable networks, while MSNBC, Hallmark and USA followed.

ABC’s World News Tonight topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8.4 million viewers, reports AP, while NBC’s Nightly News trailed behind with 8 million. CBS Evening News had 6.2 million, AP reports.

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