Weekly Cable Ratings: Fox News Opens April with Primetime, Total Day Wins

Fox News' 'The Five'
Fox News' 'The Five' (Image credit: Fox News)

 Fox News opened the first full week of April in first place on both the primetime and total day charts, according to Nielsen. 

Fox News averaged 2.1 million primetime viewers to top all cable networks for the week of April 5 to April 11, reported Nielsen. MSNBC was a distant second with 1.6 million viewers, followed by HGTV with 1.1 million viewers. CNN finished fourth with 1 million viewers followed by TBS with 986,000 watchers.

Hallmark Channel (873,000), History (852,000), ESPN (780,000), Food Network (769,000) and Discovery Channel (749,000) rounded out the top 10 most watched networks in primetime.

Fox News also triumphed on a total day basis, averaging 1.1 million viewers to best MSNBC’s 959,000 viewers, as well as CNN (752,000 viewers), HGTV (649,000) and ESPN (483,000). 

R. Thomas Umstead

R. Thomas Umstead serves as senior content producer, programming for Multichannel News, Broadcasting + Cable and Next TV. During his more than 30-year career as a print and online journalist, Umstead has written articles on a variety of subjects ranging from TV technology, marketing and sports production to content distribution and development. He has provided expert commentary on television issues and trends for such TV, print, radio and streaming outlets as Fox News, CNBC, the Today show, USA Today, The New York Times and National Public Radio. Umstead has also filmed, produced and edited more than 100 original video interviews, profiles and news reports featuring key cable television executives as well as entertainers and celebrity personalities.