February 2023 Ratings: CNN Hits a Low Not Seen in a Decade As Fox News Marks Two Year Sweep of Cable News

February 2023 will certainly be remembered as a month of controversy in cable news as the industry made many of the headlines it covered during the month. Dominion Voting Systems’ court filings continued to drop bombshell revelations throughout the month, while CNN’s Don Lemon stirred controversy with remarks on women.

Despite the drama, the ratings remained relatively stable as the same dynamic between the top three networks played out yet again: Fox News far out front, MSNBC in second and CNN a distant third in total viewers, but beating MSNBC in the key 25-54 age demographic.

February marked Fox News topping CNN and MSNBC for two straight years, having come in third place in the ratings in January 2021 – when 2020 election coverage and the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol dominated coverage.

Fox News scored the top 13 shows for the month and aired 94 of the top 100 cable news telecasts for the month.

The Five remained the top-rated show on cable news for the 11th straight month, although Tucker Carlson Tonight came in a very close second and won in the demo.
Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Bret Baier rounded out the top five shows on cable news – in that order.

February saw CNN hit lows in the demo not seen in over ten years. CNN prime time demo average of 122,000 viewers, while still above MSNBC’s 119,000, marked the network’s smallest audience since 2013. Additionally, CNN’s 89,000 total day demo viewers was its worst showing since 2012. CNN saw a 41 percent drop in total day demo viewers from January, while Fox News dropped 35 percent and MSNBC was down 6 percent.

CNN’s new morning show, CNN This Morning, also saw its lowest numbers since its launch last fall. CNN This Morning brought in 360,000 average total viewers and 73,000 average demo viewers for the month. By comparison, Fox & Friends averaged 1.2 million total viewers and 170,000 average demo viewers for the month. MNSBC’s Morning Joe brought in 895,000 total viewers and 107,000 demo viewers.

In total viewers, CNN’s top-rated show was Anderson Cooper 360 with 673,000 viewers, followed by Jake Tapper, John King, and Erin Burnett – respectively. Cooper’s program was the 26th highest-rated show on cable news overall.

MSNBC scored the 14th highest-rated program with Lawrence O’Donnell who led the network with 1.37 million total viewers for the month. Ari Melber, Chris Hayes, Nicolle Wallace, and Alex Wagner scored the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th highest-rated shows – respectively.

Here are the total day averages in total viewers and the 25-54 category during the month of January.

Total viewers:

CNN: 474,000

Fox 1.44 million

MSNBC: 722,000

25-54 Demo:

CNN: 89,000

Fox News: 189,000

MSNBC: 80,000

Here are the prime time averages — encompassing shows which air from 8-11 p.m. —during the month of January.

Total viewers:

CNN: 587,000

Fox News: 2.26 million

MSNBC: 1.16 million

25-54 Demo:

CNN: 122,000

Fox News: 299,000

MSNBC: 119,000

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