Leading up to the presidential election, many in the mainstream (or legacy) media said that the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was going to be razor thin.
Well, as we all found it, the election was anything but tight after Trump won in a landslide. And viewers are turning their backs on legacy media bigwigs like MSNBC and CNN.
According to data from the media outlet Mediaite, which obtained viewership data from Thursday to highlight the concerns both channels face MSNBC averaged 596,000 viewers while CNN recorded just 419,000.
That may seem like a lot, but that’s a decline of 23% for MSNBC and 40% for CNN year over year.
And as for the respective network’s primetime numbers?
CNN saw a 30% decline, MSNBC declined an unprecedented 54%. Those are not good numbers for either network.
“MSNBC host Alex Wagner had her lowest rated show ever, in terms of total viewers, while Chris Hayes’s show brought in its worst numbers since May of 2016,” Mediaite reported.
For comparison, Fox News averaged 2.6 million viewers, a 60% increase from 2023. Fox News also dominated election night with over 10.3 million average viewers from 8 to 11 pm, further extending the network’s long reign atop the cable news industry.