Sharon Waxman, the founder and publisher of THE WRAP, is one of the stronger voices remaining in the world of entertainment media, ready to take a stand on anything she determines may be undermining business or country. And she seems to have some very positive qualities. For one, she has no affiliation with any Penske legacy brand, which means she isn’t immediately putting on some lengthy media day in advance of an awards ceremony she has a financial interest in–the very definition of corporate Hollywood. For another, she staunchly defends diversity and fair hiring and will not shy away from calling out executives whose performance in a job they perhaps may not have been the most qualified choice for have cost their companies–and at times the business at large–dearly.
So it was somewhat of a surprise when her site was the only one of the Hollywood-centric trades to drop this ratings nugget yesterday, courtesy of her earnest tech and business report Sean Burke:
In addition to lapping its cable news competition in the ratings, Fox News has something else to brag about: topping the major broadcast networks when it comes to weekday, same-day primetime viewership.
According to Nielsen data obtained exclusively by TheWrap, Fox News is averaging 3.63 million live viewers during primetime between the start of 2025 and March 11, a period that includes Donald Trump’s inauguration and his recent address to Congress. That Monday-Friday viewership — spanning its primetime lineup of Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Greg Gutfeld — surpassed ABC, NBC and CBS during that same time by the metric of same-day viewing.
Exclusive to whom, WRAP-pers?
Funny how mere hours later MEDIAITE’s Jakub Porzycki dropped this story:
Fox News has kicked off a record-breaking 2025 by crushing its cable news peers in primetime while also outpacing all major broadcast networks in total viewers, despite broadcast being available in more homes across America.
According to Nielsen ratings, the network topped all television networks in weekday primetime (Monday through Friday 8-11 p.m ET) so far this year. Fox prime time from December 30th to March 11th has averaged 3.63 million total viewers, beating out CBS’s 3.57 million for the same time period. NBC landed in third place with 3.13 million viewers, while ABC scored 3.12 million and ESPN rounded out the top five with 3.03 million total viewers.
And Porzycki didn’t stop with just that:
During the week ending March 9th, Fox saw even stronger ratings. Fox prime time averaged 4.8 million viewers – good enough to best programming on ABC News, NBC News, and CBS News. Fox News pulled in an average of 3.9 million prime-time viewers, with 550,000 in the age 25-54 demographic sought after by advertisers.
That was enough to dominate cable and surpass the broadcast networks and was Fox’s most-watched primetime week since the November election.
In total day ratings (6 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET), the network attracted 2.1 million viewers and 280,000 in the demo.
And even before March, there was stuff out there about how well FOX NEWS had been doing, even if it was somehow couched in an overall favorable narrative that sought to incoroporate its usual arch-rivals, per a February 27th piece from ADWEEK’s Mark Mwachiro :
The cold month of February was warm to all three cable news networks. Neither CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC suffered viewership losses in total viewers and the Adults 25-54 across primetime and total day.
Fox News continues to lead the way with large viewership numbers as the Donald Trump administration settles back into the Oval Office. According to Nielsen Media Research, this was FNC’s most-watched February across total day in network history, arriving on the heels of its most-watched January.
MSNBC continues to see an increase in viewership with double-digit growth in primetime and total day. CNN is also trending in the right direction as the network recorded its second straight month of growth in total viewers and the demo.
It’s a similar tone to how the paywall-protected piece with the provocative headline Is Trump Still ‘Ratings Viagra’ for Cable News which Burke and his aide-de-camp Tess Patton dropped a day before the above “exclusive” began:
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has been a boon to cable news ratings, but the blessings have not been distributed equally.
Fox News has continued its remarkable dominance in cable news, rising to 3.1 million viewers in prime time in February compared to 2.8 million in January.
Meanwhile, rivals MSNBC and CNN have also recorded gains, but off a much smaller base and after dramatic losses in the wake of the Nov. 4 election.
“He’s been ratings Viagra, again,” one MSNBC producer told TheWrap. “We have seen a noticeable jump [in viewership] since the inauguration.”
Yet even Mwachiro offered a more nuanced and qualified assessment of MSNBC’s 2025-to-date performance than did Burke and Patton:
Compared to January, MSNBC’s primetime lineup was up +53% in total viewers and +76% in the demo. Across total day, it was up +26% in total viewers and +47% in the demo.
Looking at its year-to-year performance, MSNBC was down -16% in total viewers and -9% in the demo during primetime. During total day, it was down -25% in total viewers and -21% in the demo relative to 2024.
Ratings Cialis, perhaps. Viagra? Hope your prescription is more effective than MSNBC’s.
What digging Burke did do–and well, I will concede–was to put the larger picture statement into some perspective, though it took him almost the entire length of his piece to get around to those particulars:
While Fox News’ big 2025 is difficult to downplay, its gains relative to the broadcast networks require several key disclaimers.
CBS aired a lot of reruns in January, with many of its shows returning last month, and its most-watched show, “Tracker,” airs on Sundays. An NBC source also noted that the broadcast networks are more concerned with seven-day delayed viewing — which includes streaming and viewers who recorded shows and watched them later — rather than just live viewership, which significantly boosts their overall averages.
Sounds understandably defensive, but, heck, that’s a network spokesperson’s job. A reporter’s should be to look at information and attempt to discern objective conclusions. For one, when one needs to go to two decimal places to declare victory, it’s anything but conclusive. An advantage of 60,000 viewers in a country of 300-plus million is an even smaller plurality than electoral college votes were determined by, For another, when I look at the fact that there’s not a single network drawing more than 1.2% of the U.S. TV populus to turn on any measurable device in prime time with any sort of impetus–including the incideniary rhetoric of Fat Orange Jesus and friends— I’d offer that’s a headline in its own right.
One probably worth a Waxword or two to dissect and look at why splintering and lethargy have reduced the bar of being number one to levels not seen even within cable buckets when they reached even fewer households than the 63.6 million FOX NEWS currently can be seen in–another point Burke finally offered up at story’s end, attributing a FOX NEWS source for that clarification.
If I don’t miss my guess, it’s probably the same source that supplied Porzycki with these additional talking points that, for good or bad, came off more exclusive than anything THE WRAP offered up.
Prozycki didn’t offer a shred of pushback on the median age and income of all of those viewers–which previous musings of ours have established as among the oldest and poorest measured anywhere. One would think while Burke was providing asterisks to bring down to Earth ehay was otherwise obviously a press release sell from an opportunisitic right-skewing network he might have remembered to throw those in as well?
And if not him, maybe his anything-but-shy boss might have been inspired to provide that, rather than advertise an “exclusivity” which even a cursory Google search like the one I’ve just done belies?
It’s two highly qualified months and change of qualified in-the-moment daypart viewing—excluding a key competitive night— with an advantage that translates to a literal handful of Nielsen panel households across an entire country. BFD, as my dad would exasperate.
How ironic that this overexuburance and lack of detail from an otherwise more objective resource is coming in celebration of a network and fan base that hues and cries about “fake news”. Sharon Waxman and her team just gave us a couple of doses of it themselves.
Until next time…