MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow beat out Fox News’ Sean Hannity in the Nielsen ratings to become the most-watched cable news host for the month of March.
Maddow averaged 3.058 million viewers for the month, narrowly topping Hannity’s 3.00 million. That also marks Maddow’s best performance ever in the 9 p.m. ET time period. Maddow also won in the adults 25-54 demographic, nabbing an average of 671,000 viewers in the measure compared to Hannity’s 616,000. CNN’s Anderson Cooper finished third in the hour with an average of 1.125 million viewers and 382,000 in the demo.
MSNBC also had a strong month as a whole, with the network’s prime time, daytime and total day numbers all setting new MSNBC records in total viewers. MSNBC’s primetime lineup averaged 2.398 million viewers in March, up 8% over the same month last year. Both Fox News and CNN saw declines in the same period of 18% and 16% respectively. MSNBC was also up this March in both daytime and total day, while Fox News and CNN saw declines.
Still, Fox News remained the top cable news network in the first quarter of 2018, averaging 2.479 million viewers overall with 494,000 in the key demo during primetime. MSNBC was second in primetime with 1.859 million viewers and 405,000 in the demo. CNN was third with 985,000 viewers and 341,000 in the demo. Hannity also beat Maddow in total viewers for the quarter, netting 3.196 million viewers to Maddow’s 2,993 million. However, Maddow beat Hannity in the demo 664,000 to 662,000.
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