The New York Times’ TV Decoder unearths one point from the pile of convention ratings results: two nights last week, the cable news networks, combined, beat the three broadcast networks, combined. The numbers were powered by huge ratings for Fox during the Republican convention in particular:
On the night that Senator Barack Obama addressed the Democratic convention, Fox averaged 3.3 million viewers while CNN averaged 5.6 million. On the night that Senator McCain spoke to the Republican convention, Fox averaged 7.4 million viewers while CNN averaged 3.1 million.
All this sheds a little light on the tensions happening over at MSNBC and NBC News, and how they’re not likely to go away even after David Gregory takes over election night coverage. NBC News may be the company’s flagship operation, but MSNBC gives NBC Universal a hold (if a smaller one still than Fox and CNN) in an important TV sector. And Fox has not exactly been punished in the numbers for having a lot of outspoken hosts.
Fox News doesn’t have a more staid network big brother to mesh with, like MSNBC, buut don’t think that MSNBC is going to surrender the “passion” market anytime soon. There’s too much riding on it.