The ratings woes continue for MSNBC post-election, as the liberal cable news channel saw nearly half of its viewers flee following President-elect Donald Trump’s victory. Perhaps even more stark, though, is that the network’s biggest (and highest-paid) star just saw her viewership sink to the point where she was recently beaten by a rerun of Ancient Aliens.
According to Nielsen Media Research, MSNBC has lost 47 percent of its overall audience since Election Night compared to the rest of the year, averaging just 497,000 total-day viewers and 49,000 in the advertising demographic of adults aged 25-54. CNN has also seen double-digit losses, dipping 33 percent and pulling in just 357,000 total-day viewers and 65,000 in the key demo.
In primetime, the post-election drop is even more severe. While right-wing juggernaut Fox News has unsurprisingly seen its ratings soar with Trump’s win, surging 24 percent year-to-date and drawing 3 million viewers, MSNBC has sunk 52 percent. In the 8-11 p.m. time slot, the network’s total audience has collapsed to 644,000 viewers and 63,000 in the 25-54 demographic. CNN is also significantly down, shedding 39 percent of its total primetime viewership and drawing just 453,000 viewers.
The decisive loss by Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, which included Trump sweeping all seven battleground states, has obviously prompted disenchanted progressives and Democrats to flip the channel or just withdraw from cable news altogether. Since the election, for instance, Fox News now holds 62 percent of the cable news audience in total day and 73 percent in primetime.
Making matters worse for MSNBC, the network’s star has also seen viewers flee in droves. Rachel Maddow, who recently extended her contract to the tune of $25 million annually (still a pay cut of $5 million per year), now only broadcasts her primetime show on Monday evenings. Since moving to a once-a-week schedule, her show has typically been seen as something of a special attraction for MSNBC’s audience and is generally one of the top-rated programs on cable.
However, this past Monday, The Rachel Maddow Show attracted just 1.3 million total viewers and a paltry 84,000 in the key 25-54 demographic. (It still more than tripled its CNN 9 p.m. competition.) The telecast represented Maddow’s lowest overall viewership of the year and the worst performance in the demo since 2015. Week to week, Maddow is down 13 percent in total viewers and 34 percent in the demographic.
Even more startling, though, is just how far she was behind the rest of the cable TV competition in the demographic audience. In her 9 p.m. time slot, for instance, FXX’s broadcasts of Family Guy and Adult Swim’s airings of Bob’s Burgers both outdrew The Rachel Maddow Show in the advertising metric. Expanding out to later time slots, an 11 p.m. repeat of History’s Ancient Aliens pulled in 5,000 more demo viewers than Maddow.
The network’s other flagship shows have also really felt the losses. Notably, Morning Joe — which went all in on defeating Trump — has continued to see its audience flee in droves since co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough announced they’d met the president-elect to “restart communications.”
Ever since the married couple revealed last Monday their fence-mending meeting at Mar-a-Lago, they’ve not only seen the audience turn the channel in real-time but those viewers have yet to return. According to Nielsen, the show’s ratings have dropped 37 percent since then, plunging to just 618,000 total viewers and 49,000 in the demo.
The post-election downturn for MSNBC has been so drastic that for the entire month, which also includes the millions that tuned into Election Night, the network is still down year-over-year compared to last November (which did not have a major election juicing interest).
Compared to 2023, MSNBC dropped five percent in primetime viewership and eight percent in total day. Meanwhile, CNN was still up 36 percent in primetime and Fox News surged 90 percent in the evenings. Even the centrist startup cable channel NewsNation saw double-digit growth year-over-year, growing 22 percent in primetime.
Of course, it is likely that this is all part of the cyclical nature of partisan cable news.
“A post-election dip in viewership was always projected and internal thinking is that it will pick up in the New Year, post-inauguration,” a network source told The Independent.
And there is indeed precedent for that. After the 2020 election, which saw Trump lose to President Joe Biden and go on an election-denying tirade that climaxed with an insurrectionist riot, Fox News saw its primetime viewership decline by more than half. After a brief tumble out of the top spot in cable news, the conservative cable giant soon rose again and regained its ratings crown.
MSNBC also saw its ratings plummet after Trump’s 2016 win and Biden’s disastrous debate performance this past summer, only to see the viewers return in both instances. On top of that, even with the recent audience erosion, MSNBC is still significantly outdrawing CNN, which just had its two lowest-rated weeks in over 10 years.
Additionally, MSNBC’s drop appears to have leveled off in the past week, suggesting that the network could soon reverse the trend. At the same time, Fox News’ surge also appears to have stabilized post-election.
