Last week’s coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings and the manhunt that ensued afterward presented a unique opportunity for the major news networks—namely CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC—to compel large audiences to watch. Throughout last week, Fox News was at the top of the ratings food chain; however, during Friday’s final showdown, those numbers changed a little bit.
On Friday, Fox News did still manage the overall win in total viewership, averaging almost 6 million total viewers across primetime. The network managed to pull in its biggest audience when Shepard Smith took over as the anchor during the 8 p.m. ET timeslot. Deadline is noting that at that time Fox News had 7.7 million viewers with eyeballs glued to the screen.
CNN came through in the 25-54 demographic, however. That news network had been coming behind in viewers throughout the week. While CNN’s primetime audience was only 5.4 million total viewers, CNN did manage to best Fox News in the advertising demo, bringing in 2.5 million youthful viewers versus Fox News’ 1.9 million in the demo.
Where does this leave MSNBC? Pretty low on the totem pole, I’d say. The Comcast-owned news network pulled a dismal third place in both total viewership and in the 25-54 demo. During primetime, MSNBC only brought in 1.7 million total viewers—which is less than CNN and Fox News did just in the demo. Overall, though, it was still a good week for news coverage.
