The leader continues to be “Fox News”, but the average daily total of viewers is just 1.2 million; “MSNBC” had 780 thousand and “CNN”, in 3rd place, only 479 thousand people per day. Average audience is aging and the majority is in their 70s
The 3 main cable TV stations specializing in news in the United States, Fox News, MSNBC It is CNN, had a terrible 2023. The audience continued to plummet. The target audience is increasingly older, in their 70s. And this type of news platform has less and less relevance in the North American media market.
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There is still a “demonstration effect” which masks the problem. Anyone who enters a congressman's office in Washington or a law firm in New York will sometimes find a TV tuned to a news station. But the general public has abandoned this habit.
The reality is that Nielsen data published by websites Mediaitis It is The Columbian show the Fox News In 2023, it had a total average daily audience of 1.2 million people. A drop of 19% compared to 2022. MSNBC there were 780 thousand, a slight increase of 6.4% over the previous year. In the case of CNNthe daily average number of people watching the channel was 479 thousand (a drop of 15.7%), which puts the broadcaster in a distant 3rd place in the market.
One of the signs that the cable news TV market is shrinking in the US comes from data from the S&P Global Market Intelligence: the 3 main broadcasters (Fox News, CNN It is MSNBC) are currently accessible at just 70 million addresses in the country. In 2016, there were 90 million homes. Subscribers to pay TV services are less and less interested in including these channels in their paid packages.
To make matters worse, the age range of viewers doesn't help cable news. According to Nielsen data, the average age of people who watch the audience leader, Fox Newsit's from 69 years old. In the case of 2nd place, the MSNBCviewers have, on average, 70 years. And the CNNwhich sees its audience continually plummet, had the average age of its audience jumping from 60 years old in 2017 to 67 years in 2023.
With an older audience, news TV in the USA is far from the audience most coveted by advertisers, viewers aged between 25 and 54 – considered more frequent consumers and with greater purchasing power.
In the case of Fox News, its total daily audience of people aged 25 to 54 is just 149,000 people. At MSNBC, only 87,000. And on CNN94,000.
EXCHANGES IN COMPANIES
The broadcasters underwent changes in command and in some of their main products in 2023. In April, the Fox News announced the departure of its host from the highest-rated program: Tucker Carlson. He was in front of Tucker Carlson Tonight since 2016.
Carlson's departure took place a week after the Fox News having agreed to pay US$787.5 million in a defamation lawsuit filed by the company Dominion Voting Systems.
The electronic voting machine manufacturer accused the North American broadcaster of spreading disinformation about the 2020 United States presidential elections. At the time, Donald Trump and former allies claimed that Dominion machines had been hacked and programmed to exchange votes in favor of Joe Biden. The demonstrations of fraud were broadcast by the broadcaster.
The agreement spared Fox from facing a trial that would have put Carlson on trial.
A CNN changed the company's CEO in July. Chris Litch stepped down after the US magazine The Atlantic made a report and questioned the executive's leadership capacity. Mark Thompson, 66, took over as CEO and chief executive of the network on October 9 and went on to lead the board as the network's editor-in-chief.
BRAZIL
Brazilian cable news channels also face difficulties and have a small audience, as shown by the Power360 in this post from July 2023.
GloboNews, Jovem Pan News It is CNN Brazil lead the audience of the 5 main paid news TV channels. Record News It is BandNews complete the list.
The Marinho family broadcaster leads the 3 shifts (morning, afternoon and night). Jovem Pan comes in 2nd place, in the afternoon and at night. In the morning, 2nd place is tied between CNN Brazil It is Young Pan. The numbers are an average from January to May 2023.
There are no updated and published figures on cable TV audiences in Brazil, but the Power360 found that the figure for half of last year remained unchanged until December 2023.
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