Wednesday with Cynthia, News Depression

Total news viewing is down for the fifth straight week. Just a small dip this time, 5% total day, 3% prime from last week. On the total day average, 1,794,000 Americans were watching the four television cable news networks each quarter-hour. In prime time the networks averaged 2,801,000 total viewers.

At the height of the Iraqi war, the week of March 17th, there were 13,000,000 people watching news in prime time and 8,420,000 in total day. That?s a 78.7% drop in total viewing and in prime time it was down 78.5%. About five times as many Americans watched cable news two months ago as are watching it now and Fox is doing the best job of retaining its war time audience.

Once again FoxNews dominated, finishing seventh in prime time and total day viewing among the basic cable ad supported networks. Once again CNN is no longer in the top ten and MSNBC and Headline News aren?t even close.

Market share breakdown for the week:

Prime Time:

FoxNews 53.2%
CNN 28.9%
MSNBC 10.3%
Headline News 7.6%

Total Day:
FoxNews 51%
CNN 27%
MSNBC 11.7%
Headline News 10.3%