MSNBC ended the week of Dec. 21st with the No. 1 cable-news ratings on television, beating Fox News for the first time in 17 years. For the Monday through Friday leading up to the Christmas holiday, MSNBC averaged 1.558 million total viewers, while Fox News averaged 1.541 million and CNN averaged 975,000. It was the first time MSNBC finished first for a week since September 2000. It was also the fourth week in a row that MSNBC beat Fox News in the 8-11 p.m. prime-time hours in both total viewers and the 25-54 news demo. The Rachel Maddow Show was the most-watched cable news program of the week, with more than 3.2 million total viewers (compared to about 2.3 million for Sean Hannity). The victory comes amid a coordinated advertiser boycott of Tucker Carlson’s prime-time Fox News show after the host claimed immigrants make America “dirtier.”
