As per new Nielsen Media Research data from this weekend, MSNBC’s precipitous ratings decline hit a new low when the 28-year-old network has fallen behind NewsNation, which has only been around three years and added around-the-clock news programming on June 1.
On Saturday, NewsNation topped MSNBC in the key 25-54 demographic for a total of six hours with the noon Eastern hour and then from 2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Over the course of noon to 7:00 p.m. Eastern, NewsNation won by a healthy 35 percent over the failing MSNBC.
This might be a Captain Obvious-like observation, but Comcast seems to have made the right move in soon jettisoning MSNBC (and six other cable networks, including CNBC).
As for the specifics, noon Eastern’s NewsNation Live with Laura Ingle beat an MSNBC rerun of The Katie Phang Show by a whopping 162 percent (34,000 in the demo versus a bleak 13,000).
By 2:00 p.m. Eastern, NewsNation Now with fill-in host Jesse Weber (subbing for former Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Anna Kooiman) would crush longtime MSNBC weekend host Alex Witt by 52 percent and expand to a massive 150-percent disparity an hour later.
The numbers continued to tilt heavily in NewsNation’s direction.
For example, the 6:00 p.m. Eastern hour had a 90-percent win for NewsNation Now host Adrienne Bankert romping over the deeply partisan Saturday Show with Jonathan Capehart, which featured far-left darlings such as New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, NBC law enforcement analyst Frank Figliuzzi, former Congressman Mondaire Jones (D-NY), Vanderbilt’s Dr. Jonathan Metzl, and former U.K. Labour Party leader David Miliband.
Overall, from noon to 7:00 p.m. Eastern, NewsNation’s advantage over MSNBC in the 25-54 age range clocked in at 35 percent.
NewsNation’s growing ratings also extended to its weekday primetime lineup of Chris Cuomo, Dan Abrams, and Ashleigh Banfield seeing a 33-percent increase in total viewers when comparing the first two weeks of December.
In the 25-54 demo, it was a one-percent jump. In both cases, they were the only major cable news outlet able to point to growth amid these unusually busy news cycles for the holiday season.
Speaking of Cuomo, the win came just two days before the network announced an extension for Cuomo, whose primetime show has doubled in total viewers and 28 percent in the demo since its premiere on October 3, 2022.
Abrams stated it plainly in February 2023 by comparing concerns about ratings for Fox News Channel and — wait for it — MSNBC in 1999, just three years after both launched to NewsNation’s aspirations after The Washington Post penned a disparaging profile:
It takes time to build an audience, particularly in the cable news world. It takes time to establish brand awareness, recognition, and trust. But based on the direction we are going compared to the other three networks [CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC], it sure seems like any objective observer would say that it appears to be working. The non-biased, non-agenda-driven headline might have said “Chris Cuomo’s new cable home moves moderates; They may have a ways to go, but the winds sure seem to be going their way.”
