Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Inauguration Cable Ratings: CNN Triumphs with 10 Million and Wins Day, Fox News Crumbles with 2 Million, Loses More Steam

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At 12 Noon on Wednesday, 10 million people were glued to CNN for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s Inauguration.

On Fox News, a little over 2 million people bothered to check in to see their 46th president sworn in.

For CNN, Wednesday was a day of highs, with big numbers all day trouncing Fox, their former rival. CNN took the top 16 of 20 spots on the cable ratings chart for Wednesday. MSNBC had the other four.

Fox News also eschewed the Celebration of America, the 90 minute Inauguration special shown on every network and channel except those associated with Rupert Murdoch. Fox paid the price. They were swamped by their revivals. At 9pm Sean Hannity managed to find 3 million naysayers. CNN had 7 million on their main channel. So did MSNBC.

As Fox News suffers layoffs and mass defections by viewers, they have to change their game. They can’t be the Fictional News Channel anymore. We are in the middle of a pandemic and an economic crisis caused by Donald Trump and a Republican senate. Fox News viewers, who skew older and poorer than CNN and MSNBC, know that. Fox is lying to them and they get it.

Roger Ailes would have changed with the times.

Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. He is also the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

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