Fox News Scores With, Without Trump

Fox News Channel averaged 2.7 million viewers Tuesday in the 7 p.m.-8 p.m. hour, which was primarily devoted to coverage of Donald Trump's contentious Iowa press conference, according to Nielsen ratings. But even when it was not covering Trump, its regular lineup was taking top honors.

The press conference was the one that featured the ouster, briefly, of an insistent Jorge Ramos, reporter for Univision, and Trump doubling down on his criticisms of Fox anchor Megyn Kelly.

Fox averaged 2.6 million viewers in the time period and 371,000 in the 25-54 demo.

That is more than CNN (885,000) and MSNBC (841,000) combined in the demo.

In prime time, FNC averaged 503,000 in the demo vs. 289,000 for CNN and 183,000 for MSNBC.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.