Logo

Fox News Dominates Convention Ratings

Aug 31, 2004  •  Post A Comment

Fox News Channel reasserted itself in a big way by dominating the first night of Republican National Convention coverage with more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined, according to data from Nielsen Media Research.

From 8-11 p.m. Monday, Fox averaged 3.717 million viewers. CNN, which beat Fox during the Democratic gathering in Boston in July, was back in second place for the night with an average of 1.230 million viewers, followed by MSNBC with 819,000 viewers.

Convention coverage on PBS averaged a 1.8 household rating in 42 of Nielsen’s 56 metered markets. That was 6 percent higher than the overnight rating for PBS at the Democratic Convention in Boston.

Compared with the first night of the Democratic gathering, Fox was up 127 percent, while CNN viewership was down 1 percent and MSNBC was off 28 percent.

There was no national broadcast coverage of the GOP proceedings Monday night.