MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ Ratings Surged 12 Percent in 2018 as Fox News and CNN Declined
Jon Levine
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” is posting its best-ever quarterly viewership numbers, just as President Donald Trump tweeted unsubstantiated claims about the show’s “really bad” ratings.For all of 2019 through Tuesday, which is all of the year-to-date data we currently have available from Nielsen, “Morning Joe” is up 10 percent compare to the first quarter of 2018. Meanwhile, Fox News and CNN’s morning shows are down 5 percent and 7 percent, respectively, year over year.While “Fox & Friends” is the top-rated morning show among cable news networks, second-place “Morning Joe” nearly doubles third-place CNN’s audience, averaging more than 1 million total viewers per episode.This is the 16th straight quarter that “Morning Joe” will beat CNN’s “New Day” in viewers. The MSNBC morning show is also beating CNN in the key adults 25-54 demographic, marking the seventh-straight quarter for that claim.Also Read: Trump Mocks MSNBC, CNN Ratings Drops After Mueller Probe: 'Fake News Never Wins!'On Thursday, Trump tweaked his former cheerleaders Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. “Wow, ratings for ‘Morning Joe,’ which were really bad in the first place, just ‘tanked’ with the release of the Mueller Report,” he said in an early morning tweet. While “Morning Joe” ratings are down so far this week versus last, it’s hard to justify that they’ve “tanked.” This Monday and Tuesday, the first two shows since Attorney General William Barr released the first findings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, “Morning Joe” averaged 997,000 total viewers. Last week, it averaged 1.1 million — a decline of 12 percent.Also Read: 'Fox & Friends' Host Says Jussie Smollett 'Will Continue to Push the I-Am-a-Victim Narrative'Trump made other ratings claims in his Thursday tweet: “Likewise, other shows on MSNBC and CNN have gone down by as much as 50%. Just shows, Fake News never wins!”Trump didn’t cite specific numbers or say which shows had suffered a 50 percent drop-off, but he may have been obliquely referring to a widely shared piece in the Daily Beast citing ratings concerns at MSNBC now that the Trump-Russia collusion narrative was on ice. There was also an Associated Press story published Wednesday showing a sharp ratings drop-off for Rachel Maddow in the days following delivery of the Mueller report.Per Nielsen ratings, not one MSNBC show is down 50 percent following the Mueller release, though recent primetime shows have experienced declines hovering around that huge number on a year over year basis. CNN also has sizable drops — particularly on a March 2018 vs. March 2019 basis — but we do not see any version of declines approaching 50 percent.Read original story Sorry, President Trump – ‘Morning Joe’ Is Posting Highest-Ever Viewership This Quarter At TheWrap
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” grew its total viewership 12 percent in 2018, to nearly 1.1 million on average, while rivals Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” and CNN’s “New Day” both saw ratings drops for the year, according to Nielsen data.
MSNBC’s morning show, hosted by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinksi, finished the year with its highest ratings — and the highest for MSNBC in the 6 to 9 a.m. timeslot in the network’s 21-year history.
The show also saw a slight 1 percent bump in the advertiser-coveted 25- to 54-year-old news demographic, from 228,000 to 230,000 on average.
According to Nielsen data, “Fox & Friends” ratings fell in 2018 by 5 percent overall and 11 percent in the key demo. However, the Fox News staple remained in a commanding lead overall, averaging 1.5 million total viewers and 325,000 in the demo.
The picture was bleaker at CNN, whose “New Day” sank nearly 9 percent in total viewers, to 576,000, and 17 percent in the demo, to 188,000. Network star Chris Cuomo’s departure from “New Day” last May for a new primetime show only accelerated the downward trend as the network fell further behind its two network news competitors.
All three news networks enjoyed robust ratings growth in 2017, powered by the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House and a seemingly endless stream of news.
The good news for “Morning Joe” broadly mirrors the network’s overall ratings fortunes, particularly primetime host Rachel Maddow, whose show averaged 2.89 million total viewers last year, a 12 percent gain from 2017. (She still trails Fox News’ Sean Hannity, who averaged 3.25 million viewers for original episodes in 2018.)
“Morning Joe” viewership may have received a backhanded boost from President Trump himself, who often inveighs against the program and its hosts on Twitter.
Last August, he called “Morning Joe” a “dead show” with “very few people watching.” Trump’s cutting personal attacks on the appearance of Brzezinski back in 2017 dominated the new cycle for days and greatly raised the program’s profile.
Scarborough and Brzezinski frequently invoke their past friendship with Trump — who made friendly appearances on the show as recently as 2015 — and have said multiple times that Trump has evolved considerably from the man they used to know.
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