October overall ratings are in. MSNBC - in its final full month named as such - did extraordinarily well month-on-month.
There are no major news events in the month so it is as “pure“ of a summary as can be.
Numbers are in thousands.
Total day:
Overall
M/M Chg
Y/Y Chg
25-54
M/M Chg
Y/Y Chg
FOX
1,508
-6%
-7%
145
-19%
-32%
MSNBC
504
-1%
-44%
45
Unch
-54%
CNN
388
-3%
-27%
58
-6%
-42%
Primetime (8 to 11pm):
Overall
M/M Chg
Y/Y Chg
25-54
M/M Chg
Y/Y Chg
FOX
2,334
-8%
-15%
228
-19%
-36%
MSNBC
815
+1%
-41%
73
+6%
-54%
CNN
504
-7%
-39%
77
-11%
-56%
Ranking positions among cable networks:
Overall Day
25-54 Day
Overall PM
25-54 PM
FOX
1
2
2
4
MSNBC
3
14
5
19
CNN
5
T-8
6
17
Maddow - who I should note only does one show a week - has the No.1 non-FNC program in cable news with 1.64M total and 156K in 25-54. Her show’s actual leaderboard position is 13th and 14th respectively… out of top 15.
This is going to be interesting to watch. I’m still not really sure what the purpose of MSNOW will be, and I’m still skeptical of how this company is going to make any money.
I hate the name and the logo, and I’m even more perplexed that they chose it, as I see it appears they do not own the msnow.com domain. Even mysource.com is owned by someone else. Same for those handles on most of the social media platforms. They really should have just picked something entirely different rather than try to pick something that was similar enough to MSNBC.
“NBC Nightly News” was able to claim victory over ABC’s ‘World News Tonight” last week among viewers between 25 and 54 — the demographic most coveted by advertisers. It’s the first time “Nightly” has been able to tout that distinction during the nascent tenure of its new anchor, Tom Llamas. Meanwhile, NBC’s “Today” was the most-watched morning-news program last week among viewers overall, a lead normally held by ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
I remember thinking NBC Today would never not be #1. I know ratings were going down when Anne Curry was there, but they went RIGHT down after she was fired. Seems they’re only just starting to lift.
I don’t have any details about those specific deals, but I can see how they might have struck some sort of agreement with a handful of the station groups (Nexstar, Tegna, Scripps, et al). Overall, in the US, there’s a fair amount of different types of content sharing – CNN and the AP have extensive partnerships with many of those station groups, though both CNN and AP flip around and distribute that video back to affiliates as video wire services (called Newsource and APTN, respectively.)
I’m guessing MS NOW has agreements with those station groups to receive material during breaking news, likely on a pay-per-use basis. So much of MS NOW’s news content all day long is probably going to just be talking heads and whatever happened in DC today, so I’m guessing they’re not going to have too much of a need for video from local TV stations. With that said, I’m sure they don’t want to be caught with their pants down with no video the next time there’s a mass shooting or a plane crash somewhere in Middle America.
