Trump’s Victory Crashes CNN, MSNBC, Legacy Media Ratings

The Leftist mainstream media ratings took a nosedive after Donald Trump handed Kamala Harris a historic crushing defeat.

Nielsen viewership data obtained by Mediaite shows that Fox News attracted a daily audience of 2.6 million on Wednesday (the day after the election), while MSNBC was a distant second with 596,000 viewers, followed by CNN with 419,000.

Among the 25-54-year-olds, the highly coveted demographic, Fox News raked in 375,000 viewers, while MSNBC and CNN attracted a paltry 71,000 and 91,000, respectively.

CNN and MSNBC’s appalling ratings also represent a steady annual decline in their popularity. Within 12 months, MSNBC’s popularity fell by 23% while CNN’s tanked by 40%. Interestingly, Fox News recorded a 60% increase in popularity during the same period.

On election night, Fox News attracted an average of 10.3 million viewers between 8 to 11 pm, while MSNBC and CNN reached 6 million and 5.1 million viewers, respectively.

Post-election, Fox News averaged 4.4 million while MSNBC reached 808,000 viewers and CNN performed even more dismally with a measly 611,000. 

Similarly, general primetime viewership declined even further for the Leftist legacy media, with CNN recording a 30% decrease in audience numbers, while MSNBC’s fell by 54%. 

CNN was one of the country’s most trusted breaking news channels, but its audience has halved since 2020 when its political partisanship became apparent.

Similarly, Trump’s victory did not spare MSNBC and CNN journalists who posted abysmal rating figures. 

“MSNBC host Alex Wagner had her lowest rated show ever, in terms of total viewers, while Chris Hayes’s show brought in its worst numbers since May of 2016,” Mediaite reports.

During Trump’s first term in office, CNN and MSNBC aggressively pushed the Russian hoax, downplayed Hunter Biden’s laptop saga, pushed false COVID narratives, popularized the Steele dossier, and basked in Trump’s impeachment and trials, attracting millions of viewers. 

However, when Americans began understanding the fake news phenomenon and biased reporting, they started questioning the mainstream media content and started verifying information with other sources, undercutting the mainstream media’s de facto monopoly. 

Additionally, Elon Musk’s decision to allow free speech on X, formerly Twitter, also undermined the legacy media’s reputation, which hinged on the lack of alternative sources of information. Before Musk’s Twitter takeover, the microblogging platform acted as an echo chamber for the mainstream media to reinforce its narratives.

Subsequently, numerous social media accounts, including Trump’s, were suspended even for sharing links with information that conflicted with the mainstream media, which acted as “fact checkers.”

Besides the real-time viewership data, other studies have confirmed Americans’ loss of confidence in the mainstream media. According to a 2024 Gallup poll, over a third (36%) of Americans have no confidence at all in the media, while another third (33%) have “not very much” confidence.

Similarly, only 31% have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media’s ability to “fully, accurately and fairly,” report the news, highlighting the extent of biased reporting. 

However, with Fox News recording a 60% increase in popularity, and some outlets such as CNN halving their audience, these figures suggest that Americans were losing confidence only in a certain section of the media.