Monday night, August 14th belonged to MSNBC with indictment coverage.
As the news broke through the evening that Donald Trump was getting the hook in Atlanta, MSNBC numbers blossomed like roses at the state fair.
Rachel Maddow came in with 3.9 million viewers, taking Sean Hannity by 1.5 million. He was left in the dust.
Hannity had to continue at 10pm because Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld is a joke. So Lawrence O’Donnell, with Maddow and other MSNBC stars helping, beat Hannity by 1 million pairs of eyes with 3.2 million. At 11pm, the MSNBC juggernaut continued, and pounded Fox to a pulp. By then whoever watches Fox was asleep or dead. MSNBC’s 3.5 million was about twice the Fox audience.
CNN, alas, had no game. None of their shows made it to 1 million viewers. Highest number of the night was Anderson Cooper at 8pm with 958,000.
Ari Melber and Chris Hayes each basically tied Fox News at their respective hours.
The lesson here is that when real news breaks, MSNBC has become the go-to organization. Fox News viewers even know they’re not going to get the truth or facts. CNN’s core fan base is strong, but if they were aggressive they could have their own following again.
