Raving Ratings

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In March, CNN’s Anderson Cooper Edged Fox’s Greta Van Susteren For Number One Among Viewers 25-54
by Mark Joyella | 2:49 pm, March 29th, 2011

The March ratings are in, and CNN’s Anderson Cooper has a first place finish, with Anderson Cooper 360 finishing March as the number one cable news program at 10 p.m. among adults 25-54, overtaking Fox’s On the Record with Greta Van Susteren for the first time since January, 2009.

It was a tight race, with Cooper finishing with 496,000 viewers in the demo, compared to Van Susteren’s 480,000. MSNBC’s Ed Schultz was a distant third with 266,000.

Among total viewers, Van Susteren won handily, beating Cooper by 600,000.

The CNN win comes as the network has seen dramatically higher ratings amid intense coverage of breaking news in Japan, Egypt, and Libya. Overall, the network finished ahead of MSNBC among viewers 25-54 in March with a 40 percent margin of victory in primetime. That propelled CNN to several notable wins, including Eliot Spitzer’s In the Arena beating MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell (the first CNN win over MSNBC at 8 p.m. in three years) and CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight winning in the demo over MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (the first time Maddow has lost to CNN in fourteen months).

CNN’s John King, USA and Situation Room also beat their competition at MSNBC but finished behind Fox News.