
The Fox News Channel swept the post-election period with the top 500 individual cable news telecasts from early November to late December, according to Nielsen ratings reviewed by The Desk.
The top individual broadcast from the first day after Election Day to the last day of 2024 was Fox’s spillover coverage under its “Fox News Democracy 2024” banner, which saw 7.346 million households tune in between the hours of 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern Time, the Nielsen data revealed.
The following hour’s broadcast of “The Five” was the second most-watched cable news program in the post-election period, retaining 7.155 million TV households.
Of the top 10 individual TV broadcasts on cable news channels in the post-election period, eight aired on Wednesday, November 6 while the remaining two aired the following day. The Five, “Jesse Watters Primetime” and Fox’s spillover election coverage tied as the most-watched program in the top 10, with two 60-minute episodes each.
Fox News swept the top 500 list of individual programs aired on cable news in the post-election period, with an average audience of 2.8 million households, the Nielsen ratings showed. The network’s top 10 programs had an average audience of 5.5 million viewers. Most of the top 500 programs aired in prime-time or late night, when cable news viewership tends to be the highest.
Further down the list, CNN had the 507th most-watched program in the post-election period, with its spillover coverage of “Election Day in America” attracting nearly 2 million TV households. The network did not make another appearance on the list until the 578th program, which was its New Year’s Eve broadcast from Times Square featuring Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen. MSNBC’s first appearance on the list saw the November 6th broadcast of “Deadline: White House” attract 1.82 million viewers to rank as the 630th most-watched cable news program in the post-election period.
For December alone, Fox News had the 400 most-watched individual cable news programs in terms of overall viewers, with MSNBC’s broadcast of “The Rachel Maddow Show on December 9th ranked 401st. Among its top 10 programs in December, Fox News had an average audience of nearly 4.2 million TV households, the Nielsen data showed.
Fox News was the most-watched news channel in America last year, with its overall audience up 30 percent during 2024. CNN’s audience increased 20 percent on a year-over basis, while MSNBC’s audience was up 4 percent. Both MSNBC and CNN saw post-election audience drops in the period between early November and late December.
The Fox News Channel is operated by Fox News Media, a division of Fox Corporation. CNN is owned by Warner Bros Discovery. MSNBC is part of Comcast’s NBC Universal and shares resources with NBC News.