Rachel Maddow Surges To Become The #1 Show On Cable News As Fox News Empire Crumbles

For the month of April, MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show was the top-rated show on all of cable news with viewers age 25-54.

According to a press release sent to PoliticusUSA by MSNBC, ” For the month of April 2017, “The Rachel Maddow Show” was the #1 show across cable news among regularly scheduled shows in the key A25-54 demo (“The O’Reilly Factor” now off the air) and again finished as the #1 cable news show in A25-54 for the 9pm time period, beating both FOX News and CNN for the 2nd month in a row, according to Nielsen. Maddow also topped “Tucker Carlson Tonight” at 8pm, “The Five” at 9pm and “Hannity” at 10pm in A25-54 for the month. “The Rachel Maddow Show” averaged 2.4 million total viewers and 562,000 viewers A25-54, posting more year-over-year growth than its competition in total viewers (+98% vs. CNN’s +20% and FOX News’ +16%) and in A25-54 (+89% vs. CNN’s +28% and FOX News’ +30%). Year to-date, “The Rachel Maddow Show” is the fastest growing primetime show in cable news.”

Rachel Maddow’s viewership is growing more than five times faster than Fox News over the past year. It is clear that the failures of Republicans in Congress and Donald Trump have been a drag on Fox News’s growth, but resistance to Trump has been a driver of Maddow’s ratings increase. Rachel Maddow hosts the only cable news primetime show that has consistently covered Trump’s scandals and conflicts of interest.

The Rachel Maddow Show has become the cable news program for The Resistance, and her ratings explosion suggests that while Republicans are mired in complacency, the left is turned in and electrified by the challenge of taking back Congress and defeating Trump.

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Fox News is in a state of chaos, and while the network will remain on solid footing as long as it has no conservative competition, Fox’s place atop the cable news ratings mountain has never been more questionable. The Fox News empire is crumbling, and in its place, a nation is turning to Rachel Maddow to inform them about a president for whom the concept of fact doesn’t exist.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association