Fox News Finishes First In October Cable News Ratings As MSNBC Drops 20% In Prime Time Key Demo

Fox News Channel coasted to a first-place finish in the October cable news ratings, sweeping the top five most-watched prime time shows for the month and delivering an average prime time audience of 2.292 million viewers. MSNBC finished second in prime with 1.177 million viewers, followed by CNN, which failed to break one million, delivering just 624,000 viewers (down 6% from the same period last year). Fox News was down just 1% year-over-year, and MSNBC saw a decline of 2%.

Among viewers 25-54—the key demographic most valued by advertisers—Fox News led with 295,000 viewers (down 15% from 2021), followed by CNN (134,000 viewers, down just 3%) and MSNBC (114,000 viewers, with the largest decline among the cable news networks: 20%.)

Gutfeld!, A Ratings Powerhouse In Late Night, Jumps Into The Top 5

The most-watched shows for the month were The Five (3.406 million viewers), Tucker Carlson Tonight (3.298 million viewers), Jesse Watters Primetime (2.911 million viewers), Hannity (2.741 million viewers), and Special Report with Bret Baier (2.495 million viewers)—all on Fox News.

In the key demo, Tucker Carlson Tonight was the most-watched show in October, with an average audience of 470,000 viewers, followed by The Five (419,000 viewers), Jesse Watters Primetime (364,000 viewers), Hannity (344,000 viewers), and Gutfeld! (337,000 viewers)—all airing on FNC.

For Gutfeld!, October marked the show’s second-highest-rated month since the show’s launch, another sign the show is quickly becoming a force in late night:

MORE FROM FORBESWith 2.5 Million Viewers, Fox News Channel’s ‘Gutfeld!’ Beats Every Show In Late Night TVBy Mark Joyella

New Challengers Fail to Make Inroads on FNC’s Hannity

Perhaps the most interesting time period in prime time at the moment is 9 p.m. ET, where the longest-running host in all of cable news, Sean Hannity, is facing two new rivals: MSNBC’s Alex Wager, whose Alex Wagner Tonight has filled the gap left by Rachel Maddow’s move to one night a week, and CNN’s Jake Tapper, whose CNN Tonight with Jake Tapper debuted in October.

Hannity’s average audience of 2.7 million viewers was more than CNN and MSNBC combined, with Alex Wagner Tonight having its worst month since launch (1.425 million viewers and 134,000 viewers in the key demo) and CNN’s Tapper finishing a distant third with just 691,000 total viewers. That’s as much about the difficulty of drawing an audience for a new show as it is a statement about how far CNN’s overall prime time lineup has fallen. One good sign for Tapper: he jumped to second place in the key demo with 153,000 viewers—enough to beat MSNBC, but far from threatening Sean Hannity’s dominance.