Share
Commentary

After Mueller Report's Conclusion, MSNBC Ratings Take Nosedive

Share

Before President Donald Trump was sworn into office, the mainstream media lambasted him over unsubstantiated allegations of collusion between his 2016 campaign and the Russian government.

Chief among those who pushed the Russian conspiracy theory was MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, whose editorials garnered her a spike in viewers that equated to the highest ratings she had ever seen.

After two years of media speculation and a special counsel investigation, Robert Mueller submitted his final report on March 22, and Attorney General William Barr summarized the “principle conclusions” in a letter to Congress two days later. There was no evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia.

And just like that, Maddow’s stellar ratings plummeted over the week following the final report, according to Fox News.

Comparing viewership ratings for “The Rachel Maddow Show” from the first part of the week before to the first part of the week after the submission of the Mueller report, the MSNBC host lost an average of 13 percent of her viewers.

Trending:
Federal Judge Has Bad News for Hunter Biden, Says There's Zero Evidence His Charges Are Politically Motivated

Maddow lost roughly 500,000 viewers alone on the Monday after Barr published Mueller’s “no collusion” conclusion, as compared to the Monday just one week before.

She suffered a 15 percent decline during that period in viewership among the key demographic of adults age 25-52, a highly coveted segment of viewers that drive advertising dollars and network revenue.

While Maddow arguably took the biggest hit, the damage to viewership and ratings was felt all across the rest of the primetime and daytime lineups for MSNBC as well as CNN.

The MSNBC primetime lineup averaged about 2.83 million viewers the week prior to Mueller’s report but fell to an average of 2.48 million viewers for the week after.

Does MSNBC deserve to lose viewers due to their dishonesty?

President Donald Trump tweeted about the decline in viewership for MSNBC and CNN — as much as 50 percent in some cases — though he chose to focus on his early morning nemesis “Morning Joe,” MSNBC co-hosts 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. Likewise, other shows on MSNBC and CNN have gone down by as much as 50%. Just shows, Fake News never wins!” Trump tweeted Thursday.

At the same time, the report noted that Fox News’ already dominant ratings had seen a sharp uptick following the Mueller report, particularly for top-rated primetime host Sean Hannity, who received around an additional million more viewers on the Monday after the report as compared with the Monday before the report.

Related:
Trump to Show Up in Person to Support Family of Slain NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller

In fact, Hannity saw what could be his highest ratings ever on Wednesday when an estimated 4.3 million viewers tuned in, including 32 percent more viewers in the key demographic than the same night a week prior.

If it were murky before, it should be crystal clear now: MSNBC’s higher ratings over the past two years seem to have been driven almost exclusively by Maddow and the network’s obsession with the Russian collusion narrative.

With that narrative now debunked, and with little more than run-of-the-mill anti-Trump hatred to feed viewers, it appears that many of those viewers have had enough and have either changed the channel or simply turned the television off.

Truth and Accuracy

Submit a Correction →



We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

Tags:
, , , , , , , , , , ,
Share
Ben Marquis is a writer who identifies as a constitutional conservative/libertarian. He has written about current events and politics for The Western Journal since 2014. His focus is on protecting the First and Second Amendments.
Ben Marquis has written on current events and politics for The Western Journal since 2014. He reads voraciously and writes about the news of the day from a conservative-libertarian perspective. He is an advocate for a more constitutional government and a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, which protects the rest of our natural rights. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, with the love of his life as well as four dogs and four cats.
Birthplace
Louisiana
Nationality
American
Education
The School of Life
Location
Little Rock, Arkansas
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Politics




Conversation