Fox News Triples MSNBC's Audience For Midterm Election Coverage

According to NYT's Media Decoder Fox News enjoyed their highest level of viewership for a midterm election with 6.96 million viewers in prime time on Tuesday night for midterm election night coverage, doubling CNN's audience and tripling MSNBC.

Fox News, a favorite of Republicans, averaged 6.96 million viewers in prime time on Tuesday, according to ratings results from the Nielsen Company. Fox more than doubled CNN’s numbers, which averaged 2.42 million viewers, and more than tripled MSNBC, which averaged 1.94 million viewers.

Other reports determine that Fox News also provided the most balanced coverage for the night, reported on by MediaIte, who quotes Time’s Tuned In blog as well as The Politico.

MediaIte:

If you believe that the cable news landscape is symptomatic of our two-party political system, then you also probably, and predictably, saw a different tone in last nights election results. Fox News presented its coverage with a patina of celebration, while MSNBC’s took a more gloom and doom approach. But there was one important distinction between the two outlets: Fox News offered a far more balanced set of analysts for the election coverage than did MSNBC.

Time’s Tuned In blog:

Credit where due, Fox also had a more, well, balanced panel much of the night than its competitor MSNBC. Holding forth from left of center for Fox were the recently-high-profile Juan Williams and Democratic political guru Joe Trippi. MSNBC's main lineup, on the other hand, was basically its center-to-left lineup of nightly hosts: Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell.

The Politico:

MSNBC’s election coverage was led by a panel comprised mostly of its opinionated prime-time hosts (Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell, along with frequent contributor Eugene Robinson), with nary a conservative voice in the mix. In contrast, Fox News’s was provided by two anchors from its straight-news dayside, Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier, along with a panel that included conservatives like Karl Rove as well as liberals like Juan Williams. Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity stopped by only briefly.

The Daily Beast shows some amusing examples of MSNBC's partisan coverage, via multiple videos.

When almost 7 million people choose to sign in to Fox News for coverage, doubling and tripling other network's ratings and even topping them all combined, Fox is obviously doing something right.

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