Key Points
- CNN said coverage of two fatal shootings involving immigration officials in Minneapolis delivered its strongest prime-time performance since Election Night.
- The network ranked first in cable among adults 25–54 during protest coverage and logged one of its top audience days of 2026.
- Related videos and live stories drove heavy digital traffic, boosting CNN’s TV, web and podcast engagement across platforms.
The fatal shootings of two American citizens by immigration officials in Minneapolis this month drove a strong amount of interest to CNN’s cable news channel and websites, the network said in a press release on Wednesday.
The network saw its “best performance” among viewers in prime-time on the night 37-year-old Renee Good was fatally shot following an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis, with its overall viewership (P2+) seeing its strongest performance since Election Night last November, CNN said. The same was true among adult viewers between the ages of 25 and 54 years old (P25-54), the key demographic most-attractive to cable news advertisers.
“CNN’s on the ground coverage of the anti-ICE protests in Minnesota” the day after Good was shot “ranked number one in all of cable among P25-54” viewers, a CNN spokesperson said on Wednesday.
That trend repeated itself this past Saturday, when the network offered rolling coverage of the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse with the Department of Veterans Affairs, who was shot nearly a dozen times by at least two Customs and Border Patrol agents while filming an immigration-related action with his cell phone.
“CNN’s coverage of the Jan. 24 Minneapolis shooting was the second-highest day of 2026 among total viewers so far,” the network said, noting it ranked behind only CNN’s coverage of the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which occurred earlier in the month.
CNN was the second-highest cable network among total viewers the day Pretti was killed, the network said, citing data from Nielsen.
Videos from both killings were also among the most-watched content on CNN’s website, the network said.
“The top five most viewed digital videos in January were all on the various happenings out of Minneapolis, and three of the top five most engaged-with live stories were on this topic,” a spokesperson affirmed.
Coverage of the Minneapolis shootings and the capture of Maduro helped CNN grow its overall and key demographic audiences by double-digits across all programming blocks, known as “dayparts.”
CNN also saw stronger interest in its subscription product, called All Access, which simulcasts programming from its domestic and international news channels and offers on-demand access to news and special interest programming produced by the network. CNN didn’t offer specific subscriber-related data to this effect, but said its podcasts delivered “over 9 million downloads and streams year to date.” CNN’s podcasts are available for free, without an All Access membership.
The ratings boost comes at a time when CNN’s future remains somewhat murky: The network is expected to be one of several owned by Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) that will be spun out into a separate company called Discovery Communications if WBD is sold to Netflix. A hostile counter-bid made by Paramount Global would see the entirety of WBD acquired by that company, including CNN. WBD has rejected every counter-offer made by Paramount to date.
