No, that doesn't give us a massive 14,656,000 as those are not unique viewers. The industry has a way of measuring this statistic, and they call it a cumulative rating or net reach. This rating is difficult to come by because Nielson only distributes that proprietary piece of data to it's paying clients. IOW, it doesn't allow it to be published, anywhere. Having said that, there's been substantial reporting on it, and it's clear that there's more parity between the cable news channels when measuring cumulative rating.
Even still, Neilsen does publish their "Total Day" average numbers. It's was published on the same page that you used, but you glossed over. It was...
P2+ Total Day
FNC – 1,658,000 viewers
CNN – 719,000 viewers
MSNBC –755,000 viewers
CNBC – 273,000 viewers
HLN – 327,000 viewers
I'm fairly confident that 1,658,000 is a whole lot less than the combined viewers for the network evening news.
Yes they are.
You seem to be forgetting that Fox news reaches 98 million unique homes, all with differing schedules and viewing habits.
“The industry has a way of measuring this statistic, and they call it a cumulative rating or net reach”
If 4 million people watch O’Reilley at 8pm, that is 4 million unique viwers for O'Reilley. There is nothing that I see at TV By The Numbers that says that it's the exact same 3 million viewers that watched Beck at 5 pm, that are also watching O'Reilley 8 pm, plus 1 million.
Going by my own household, different members watch different programs on different TV’s, at different times. Commone sense tells us that someone is not going to sit in front of his TV all prime time, watching just FOX news, starting with Beck at 5 pm, and still sitting there watching O’Reilley at 8 pm through Hannity to O'Reeilly again at 11 pm. People have a life, do other stuff, go out to restaurants for dinners, cook, take a shower, go out and watch movies, watch other TV programs like sports etc etc. People have different schedules. Someone hat comes ome late, will probably not see O'Reilley at 8 pm, but then watch O'Reilley at 11 pm.
“Even still, Neilsen does publish their “Total Day” average numbers. It's was published on the same page that you used, but you glossed over.”
Yeah?
Would that perhaps have something to do with the fact that my “total” numbers were for total prime time, not total day?