The war for cable ratings is being won these days by Fox News Channel, with CNN a close second and third place perennial MSNBC left to eat their dust. Do the numbers change,
however, when breaking down the cable news viewing habits among females? In a word, no. Per the tables below, Fox News and CNN continue to garner the bulk of female eyeballs
tuning into cable news programming, with significantly lower numbers of female viewers for MSNBC.
So what cable news programs, exactly, are women watching? The "Fox Report with Shepard Smith," the fast and furious version of the evening news, generates the largest number of
female viewers (drawn from overall numbers of viewers) followed by "Special Report with Brit Hume," a fairly straightforward update of the day's headlines with an emphasis on news
from the nation's capital.
Perhaps confirming that Bill O'Reilly's popularity is mainly a guy thing, the number of Fox News female viewers drops significantly when "The O'Reilly Factor" airs at 8:00 ET.
Female eyeballs go way down for the liberal-conservative mudsling "Hannity & Colmes" but go back up to respectable numbers for "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren."
Not surprisingly, nearly half of the viewers for CNN's "Paula Zahn Now" are female, while about a quarter of the viewers are female for CNN franchise "Larry King Live." Zahn
tends to traffic in the lurid a la the Laci Peterson and Elizabeth Smart sagas while King's show -- which covers similar terrain -- is essentially talk radio on TV.
Compared with Fox and CNN, female numbers take a nosedive when you stack up MSNBC programs. More than half of the viewers are female for "The Abrams Report," which focuses on
the legal issues of some high profile cases (read: Michael Jackson's latest dance with the law) while females account for just about a third of all viewers for the other MSNBC
programs that run in the evening.
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Cable News: Crunching the Numbers on Female Viewers
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Start Time
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Stop Time
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Total Audience
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Females All Ages
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CNN
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||||
| Wolf Blitzer Reports |
5 p.m.
|
6 p.m.
|
1,226,525
|
151,496
|
| Lou Dobbs Tonight |
6 p.m.
|
7 p.m.
|
892,120
|
194,764
|
| Anderson Cooper 360 |
7 p.m.
|
8 p.m.
|
1,112,100
|
381,983
|
| Paula Zahn Now |
8 p.m.
|
9 p.m.
|
995,000
|
450,020
|
| Larry King Live |
9 p.m.
|
10 p.m.
|
1,632,400
|
227,450
|
| NewsNight with Aaron Brown |
10 p.m.
|
11 p.m.
|
373,790
|
208,367
|
|
FOX
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| The Big Story w/John Gibson |
5 p.m.
|
6 p.m.
|
1,261,380
|
441,787
|
| Special Report with Brit Hume |
6 p.m.
|
7 p.m.
|
1,380,533
|
745,579
|
| FOX Report w/Shepard Smith |
7 p.m.
|
8 p.m.
|
1,480,560
|
912,574
|
| The O'Reilly Factor |
8 p.m.
|
9 p.m.
|
1,115,500
|
480,666
|
| Hannity & Colmes |
9 p.m.
|
10 p.m.
|
170,000
|
65,000
|
| On the Record w/Greta Van Susterern |
10 p.m.
|
11 p.m.
|
900,500
|
475,200
|
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MSNBC
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| Lester Holt Live |
5 p.m.
|
6 p.m.
|
609,000
|
261,878
|
| The Abrams Report |
6 p.m.
|
7 p.m.
|
695,000
|
376,706
|
| Hardball with Chris Matthews |
7 p.m.
|
8 p.m.
|
893,900
|
281,198
|
| Countdown with Keith Olbermann |
8 p.m.
|
9 p.m.
|
465,000
|
276,878
|
| The Abrams Report |
9 p.m.
|
10 p.m.
|
512,000
|
205,523
|
| Scarborough Country |
10 p.m.
|
11 p.m.
|
677,800
|
245,700
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| Source: Medialink/Nielsen Media Research | ||||