Francis Chung/AP Images
CHICAGO — Not so long ago, cable news executives had resigned themselves to an election campaign that would yield little in the way of high-profile events that every four years drive ratings to record highs. The 2024 race was a rematch between two aging candidates a majority of Americans had no interest in seeing amble once again through a lengthy campaign.
Then, President Joe Biden performed so badly at a debate he had to quit the race, and former President Donald Trump got shot in the ear by a 20-year-old assassin.
The dual bombshells transformed election season from a sleepy re-run to one of the wildest presidential campaigns in history. And it’s injected a renewed sense of optimism within the cable news industry that has long suffered from anxieties about its future.
Despite those prognostications about the imminent demise of cable news, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week was a boon for the television industry. An average of more than 26 million people tuned in to watch the final night of the convention, and 28.9 million watched Vice President Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech. Those numbers come on the heels of a successful Republican National Convention for news networks, where Trump’s speech averaged 25 million viewers.
“The ratings have thankfully been great because the events and players in this very real drama are so compelling, because politics matter in people’s lives, because the visions of Harris/Walz and Trump/Vance are so different, and because the stakes are so high,” said Jake Tapper, CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent.
Tapper was front and center of CNN’s coverage of the convention, an awesome feat of choreography that bounced seamlessly from its anchors in a suite overlooking the floor of the United Center where prime time anchor Kaitlan Collins interviewed delegates and speakers throughout the week about the state of the race.
CNN saw strong numbers tuning in throughout the week, particularly among the younger audience coveted by advertisers: an average of nearly 1 million viewers in the 25-54 demo watched each night. That audience was enough to vault CNN to the top of the ratings pile several times this week, an impressive feat that harkened back to the days, not so long ago, when CNN was the news network most Americans turned to for major breaking news.
“The ratings of course underline what I believe: journalism matters, objective journalism and analysis is vital, and the American people are engaged when the stakes and stories are explained in a compelling and fair way,” Tapper said.
What did he make of how the competition at MSNBC and Fox covered the big event for Democrats? “I think our coverage at CNN has been particularly good because while other channels are rooting for one side or the other quite openly, we’re covering the conventions for the American people at home not the partisans on the stage,” he said.
“We approached this convention the same way we approached the RNC four weeks ago — with enthusiasm to explain what’s going on both on the platform, in the stands, and behind the scenes; eagerness for scoops; and appreciation for an audience that comes to us for objective, nonpartisan, fair coverage of one of the most fascinating and high stakes elections in American history,” he added.
CNN is not the only cable network in a celebratory mood. The atmosphere at an MSNBC Live event, held on Wednesday at The Drake Hotel on Magnificent Mile, was jubilant. The ratings had just come in for the second night of the Democratic National Convention and showed the liberal network beating out all the cable news and broadcast networks for the second night in a row, and on top of that drawing the largest convention audience in its 28-year history.
Who said cord-cutting would kill the cable news industry?
Everyone. And, if nothing changes, in the long run, they will be right. Which is why MSNBC is working to pump air into a few trial balloons that executives hope will keep the lights on when the cable apocalypse comes. Hence, this event, a suite of interviews with high-profile Democrats, including Stacey Abrams and Eric Holder, as part of MSNBC’s new live series.
MSNBC’s president Rashida Jones, no doubt feeling somewhat triumphant, took the stage first in the ballroom of The Drake and emphasized the importance of the network’s digital and streaming efforts. On top of the ratings win, NBC News this week celebrated digital numbers that showed the outlet’s news site drawing 115 million readers in July, behind only CNN, the most-read news website in the country.
On air, MSNBC drew the largest audience of any news network throughout the week, averaging 5.2 million viewers (more than doubling Fox News). On Thursday night, when Harris accepted the nomination, the network drew 6.8 million viewers. It was the most-watched DNC night for any cable news network — CNN and Fox included — in history. (Its competitors are quick to point out that much of MSNBC’s coverage was done not from Chicago but from a studio in New York, with an LED screen projecting the inside of the United Center. Viewers did not seem to mind.)
MSNBC executives are particularly pleased with the fact that the network managed to close the gap with CNN in the younger demo, catching up by half a million viewers compared by 2020 and 2016.
While the convention was a boon for MSNBC it was, predictably, an albatross for Fox News. The network isn’t used to being third in the ratings race, much less sixth. But that’s where Fox found itself in the younger demo on the first night of the convention, as its often adversarial coverage of the DNC saw it fall behind MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS News. Fox averaged 2.4 million total viewers throughout the week, which is about as many viewers as the network averaged the week before.
There’s an audience for counter-programming, of course. Yet given the momentum being enjoyed by Democrats and the challenges facing Donald Trump, who has flat-lined in the polls and been battered the headlines, there seemed to be little appetite from conservatives to tune in for the Democrats’ joy-a-thon.
The dip in Fox’s ratings is all but meaningless in the grand scheme of things. The network is, and has been for years, the most-watched one in all of cable news, a crown MSNBC and CNN have no hope of taking anytime soon. This summer, Fox has been watched by more people than not just its cable news competition, but also the mighty broadcast networks ABC, NBC and CBS. As Fox executives will remind you, it also boasts a sizable audience of Democrats and Independents. (Fox featured a series of Democrats throughout the DNC, which made for some of the most compelling of its programming. There was Pete Buttigieg battling it out with Lawrence Jones and Jon Favreau debating Jesse Watters. James Carville kept popping up on Hannity.) The network averaged more than 10 million viewers — 2 million of which were in the younger demo — during Trump’s speech to the Republican National Convention. For context, that number was triple the combined audience CNN and MSNBC saw for the speech.
Martha MacCallum, a reliable star of Fox’s major news coverage, has been reporting on presidential conventions since Bush-Kerry in 2004. She said the events this year are the “most energetic” she’s seen in years.
“It’s a good thing for the country when you have two fired-up conventions where people are now really excited,” she told me over the clatter of the broadcast suite of the United Center on Thursday night. “When I think about 30 days ago, what this convention would have been like? It would have been almost funereal.”
MacCallum did note that she keeps an eye on the competition when I asked about MSNBC and CNN. “There’s a lot of jubilation over there,” she said. “I hope they’re not losing their edge. I hope they’re not losing their journalistic intention. I hope they’re going to hold her feet to the fire just like you should any candidate because that’s our job.”
“They need to be very careful getting caught up in the enthusiasm,” she said. “I think a lot of that is happening and that’s not the service that we’re here to provide.”
Fox News set at the DNC
Lester Holt walked by after we finished speaking, followed soon afterwards by Vogue correspondent (and DNC speaker) Jack Schlossberg, who has emerged as a darling for the terminally online this election campaign.
Social media and its galaxy of micro-stars had a moment this convention. The DNC rolled out the blue carpet for “content creators” this year, a fact that meant journalists from so-called traditional media were often battling for access and seats inside the convention hall. Content creators were treated to their own suites and stages, while journalists unlucky enough to not have reserved seating were crammed into an overcrowded section in the nosebleeds. Even that sanctuary was infiltrated by the creators on the final night of the convention; Ta-Nehisi Coates was spotted being turned away for lack of space.
Grumbling about the zoomers and their selfie sticks aside, a silver lining for traditional media is that cable news still dominates in terms of where the news is made and disseminated from. As media reporter Paul Farhi wrote in The Atlantic this week, “Instead of being rendered obsolete by social media, TV news has achieved a sort of symbiosis with it, in which television is the dominant species.” Indeed, the viral videos of Harris, Trump and their running mates that rocket around social media, drawing tens of millions of views on platforms like TikTok, often originate on cable news.
Ben Smith, the editor in chief and co-founder of Semafor, sees cable news as having a more tenuous grasp of the wheel. “The mainstream media is dancing to a tune being played by TikTok, it’s just really clear,” he told me.
“The Kamala Harris surge basically started with young people sharing clips that had seemed cringey 4 years ago and now seem kind of cool, and then Charli XCX getting involved and the whole thing took off,” he said. “And the campaign had a little to do with it, but it was pretty spontaneous. And the media is racing to keep up with that.”
Do the big ratings this week inspire hope for the cable business? “I don’t think it changes the underlying challenges,” Smith said. “Even if they have a product people want, the economics have just changed so radically. People are still moving off the platform where they make lots of money and to platforms where it’s much harder to make money.”
We were waiting in line for ice cream at CNN and Politico’s grill, an airy tent with free booze and bites erected outside the United Center that served as a safe haven throughout the week for journalists tired of the frenzied arena. (The open bar also helped.)
The grill had a steady stream of CNN’s big stars filtering through, from Wolf Blitzer to Anderson Cooper. They were all smiles, and for good reason. Amidst all the hand-wringing in the industry, cable news had a great week.
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