Fox News Wins Election Night Cable Ratings Battle

Variety reports that Fox News barely won the election night battle for cable viewers. FOX News - led by Britt Hume -- reached 3.06 million viewers. CNN drew 2.97 million. MSNBC had 1.95 million. And as I reported the morning after, ABC News is very happy it beat the traditional Evening News champ NBC in viewers. However, keep in mind that ABC has the hottest show on TV airing Tuesday night: "Dancing With The Stars." ABC went from 21.2 million viewers for "Dancing" to 9.7 million viewers for Charlie Gibson. That's a drop of well over 50%. In contrast, NBC's "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" was ranked in fourth with 7.68 million viewers and Brian Williams held on to virtually all of it by drawing 7 million viewers. On CBS, "The Unit's" 11.73 million led into Katie Couric's 6.31 million. Gibson could never have been expected to hold on to such a massive lead-in just for election coverage. But Charlie dropped by 54%, Katie dropped by 46% and Brian only dropped by 9%. Who's the winner? I'd say kudos to both Charlie and Brian with Katie the only clear loser.