ESPN's college football and U.S. Open tennis tournament coverage helped propel the sports network to its second straight weekly primetime cable ratings win during the first full week of September.
ESPN averaged 2.6 million viewers for the week of September 5 to September 11 to top all cable networks, according to Nielsen. Fox News finished second for the week with 2 million viewers, followed by MSNBC with 1 million viewers and HGTV with 877,000 viewers.
Hallmark Channel was the fifth most-watched network for the week with 800,000 viewers, followed by ESPN2 (773,000 viewers), INSP (753,000), TLC (747,000), CNN (696,000) and USA Network (668,000).
Fox News extended its total day winning streak to 36 weeks, averaging 1.3 million viewers for the period. ESPN (1 million viewers), MSNBC (721,000), CNN (605,000) and HGTV (491,000), finished among the top five most watched cable networks in the period, according to Nielsen. ■
