June Starts Strong for Fox News, While Kimmel Can’t Catch Gutfeld
While Fox News started June at its familiar perch atop the cable news ratings—and No. 2 behind ESPN overall on cable—the news channel also managed to knock off two of the television networks in primetime.
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Fox News ended the week of June 1 with 2.7 million weekday primetime viewers and 245,000 viewers in the crucial 25-54 demo, surpassing NBC (2.6 million viewers) and CBS (2.1 million viewers), according to Nielsen Media Research Big Data + Panel.
“The Five” earned the top spot of all cable news shows despite airing in the once-barren 5 p.m. time slot. The program captured 3.3 million viewers and 318,000 in the 25-54 demo.
Fox News also continues to own the networks in late night programming, with comedic talkfest “Gutfeld!” smacking around its remaining competitors, ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” Even with former CBS late night host Stephen Colbert out of the picture, Kimmel and Fallon could not overtake Greg Gutfeld.
“Gutfeld!” garnered 2.7 million primetime viewers and 274,000 in the 25-54 demo—more than double that of “The Tonight Show.” Kimmel does appear to have drawn some of “Colbert’s “The Late Show’s” audience, which is not good news for its replacement, “Comics Unleashed.”
Ratings for the Byron Allen-hosted program are no laughing matter. “Comics Unleashed” drew only 764,000 viewers and 114,000 in the 25-54 demo—down 15% from its opening week.
Your Top Five Cable News Shows for May
How strong is Fox News’ ratings domination? In the month of May, Fox News owned the top 14 spots in cable news, except one slot occupied by MS NOW’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Maddow placed seventh.
The top five shows for the month of May were:
- “The Five”
- “Jesse Watters Primetime”
- “Gutfeld!”
- “Hannity”
- “Special Report with Bret Baier”
Another example of Fox News’ strength is found deeper in the May numbers: Three of MS NOW’s daytime shows—“Katy Tur Reports,” “Ana Cabrera Reports,” and “Chris Jansing Reports”—were beaten by “Fox & Friends First,” which airs from 4–6 a.m. EDT, during the week ending May 24.
The CBS News Blues
“ABC World News Tonight” maintained its sizable lead over “NBC Nightly News” in the network news race, while “CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil” lagged far to the rear. The once-mighty news fixture endured its ninth consecutive week with under 4 million viewers (3.7 million).
The CBS News operation is also still dealing with fallout from the firing of longtime CBS News and “60 Minutes” reporter Scott Pelley. Pelley was fired after 37 years with the network after complaining in a staff meeting about how new boss Bari Weiss had “murdered” the program “60 Minutes.”
Pelley would later tell The New York Times that getting fired felt “like your spouse was murdered.”
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I am just an average American. My teen years were in the late 70s and I participated in all that that decade offered. Started working young, too young. Then I joined the Army before I graduated High School. I spent 25 years in, mostly in Infantry units. Since then I've worked in information technology positions all at small family owned companies. At this rate I'll never be a tech millionaire. When I was young I rode horses as much as I could. I do believe I should have been a cowboy. I'm getting in the saddle again by taking riding lessons and see where it goes.
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