While the prime-time ratings woe for the major English broadcasters continues this season, many cable networks have seen strong gains in prime-time. Some of these gains, for the news channels, can be attributed to the election season and the financial crisis, but most are due to the long term trend of viewers shifting from broadcast to cable. Unlike the double digit audience losses for most of the big broadcasters, big general interest cable networks like TBS and USA have shown gains for the year over year period. TNT, another big general interest cable network, is flat for the year.
Other, more focused cable networks like SciFi, Hallmark, History Channel and Spike have shown single digit audience year over year gains. Not all the top cable networks have benefited this year though. Disney channel, one of the largest, is down over 11% in year to year comparisons. So while the news for broadcast prime-time is universally poor, cable networks have both winners and loser this season.
| Network | 2008 Average Viewers Live+SD (million) | 2007 Average Viewers Live+SD (million) | 2008 vs. 2007 Change |
| Fox News | 2.062 | 1.478 | 39.5% |
| Nick at Nite | 1.696 | 1.285 | 32.0% |
| ESPN | 1.940 | 1.756 | 10.5% |
| TBS | 1.959 | 1.787 | 9.6% |
| SCIFI | 1.216 | 1.124 | 8.2% |
| Hallmark | 1.274 | 1.181 | 7.9% |
| History | 1.145 | 1.063 | 7.7% |
| USA | 2.735 | 2.599 | 5.2% |
| SPIKE | 1.261 | 1.199 | 5.2% |
| AMC | 1.078 | 1.033 | 4.4% |
| TNT | 2.206 | 2.203 | 0.1% |
| HGTV | 1.095 | 1.095 | 0.0% |
| A&E | 1.311 | 1.323 | -0.9% |
| FX | 1.207 | 1.224 | -1.4% |
| Cartoon | 1.309 | 1.335 | -1.9% |
| Lifetime | 1.423 | 1.456 | -2.3% |
| Discovery | 1.168 | 1.271 | -8.1% |
| Disney | 2.363 | 2.674 | -11.6% |
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Our table shows the year to date (as opposed to season to date in the broadcast post linked above) prime-time audience changes for some top cable networks from 12/31/07-11/9/08 vs. 1/1/07-11/11-07. We see this data for only the top 25 cable networks, and only 23 were on both the 2007 and 2008 list.
CNN (2008 avg. 1.329 million) and ABC Family (2008 avg. 1.170 million) were in the 2008 top 25, but not the 2007 top 25. CourtTV (now TruTV) (2007 avg. 1.165) and MTV (2007 avg. 0.941 million) were in the 2007 top 25 but not the 2008.
Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2008 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
Cable is up, and a lot of the nets are happy, but FNC’s gains were election driven, and TBS’ a function of having the Red Sox this year vs. the Rockies/Diamondbacks last year. Disney’s change can probably be explained by High School Musical 3 airing at the box office rather than on Disney Channel like the first two.
Is that CourtTV (2007) versus TruTV (2008)?
Zach, yes, and TruTV was not in the 2008 list, I will edit the copy to clarify.
Robert:
If Fox News’ gains are entirely explained by the election, why haven’t MSNBC and CNN’s ratings gone up in similar number?
I mean, good heavens, it’s been over a week since the election and Greta Van Susteren pulled almost 3.5 million viewers (and almost 1 million in the 18-49 demo) last night. Greta! The woman who spent 2 years trying to track down Natalie Holloway’s killer!
Outlander: I think the reason you don’t see MSNBC is that it wasn’t among the network data Bill could calculate for (it wasn’t in the top 25). It certainly seems to have experienced similar year over year growth. CNN doesn’t surprise me — it’s not as focused on talking heads designed to whip people into a frenzy. It’s just where they turn for the results and big events, not day to day.
I tend to agree with Outlande. If the Fox news gains are solely election-driven, then CNN and MSNBC would have comparable ratings gains, as a percentage.
I’m actually surprised to see Discovery Network is down 8.1% versus last year. Discovery is my favorite cable channel!
I’m also surprised to see that Comedy Central is missing from the list. I would have guessed it to be a top 25 cable net.
Outlander, CNN ratings have gone up, that’s why they were in the 2008 top 25 list, but not the 2007 top 25 list, so I couldn’t include them in the main table, note the text under the table. I changed it to bold to bring it to folks attention.
I know from other sources that MSNBC ratings have gone up as well, but since they were not in the top 25 in either year, I don’t have any numbers for them for this post.
clutz, Comedy Central is probably pretty close to the prime-time top 25 on a season to date basis, it occasionally appears in our weekly top 25 list towards the bottom.
It should come as no surprise that FNC is getting an increase of viewers, even though the election has been over for more than a week. Many people have grown tired of MSNBC and the rheteric. FNC continues to do a good job with the news and are not the biased news organization that MSNBC and their parent company are. Greta’s ratings are helped because the other shows run at the time are re-runs.
Blazermaniac, what you write may be correct, but note that the numbers above are for Jan-early Nov. from 2 seasons, not short term trends.
Fox will buy MSNBC by the end of 2009. They will pick it up for penny’s.
Hello.
I can see from the numbers that Spike did very good. But I have a question: can you tell me if the new TUF(The Ultimate Fighter) season has anything to do with it? Or do you have any info about TUF’s numbers?
Thanks in advance.
One big reason for this is that cable networks can go for NICHE shows that broadcast networks really can’t afford to do. So those NICHE loving viewers can watch a show aimed at them vs watch the regular broadcast networks. These numbers are good for the cable network but would be horrible for the broadcast network.
Look at this place’s favorite show: MOONLIGHT. If that show had debuted on SCI FI, it may still be around. Now it’s gone, and the reruns on SCI FI aren’t likely to bring it back (like their fans dream).