Who Kicks Ass

Anderson Cooper’s Show Giving MSNBC a Run for Its Money

Don Irvine — December 11, 2011

Anderson Cooper 360 is proving to be CNN’s most reliable show in terms of ratings and continues to be a thorn in the side of the network’s closest competitor, MSNBC.

Cooper, who was “promoted” in the late summer to the 8 p.m. hour against Bill O’Reilly on the Fox News Channel and what was then Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC, now has to square off against the bombastic Ed Schultz. Cooper has shown great resilience against the liberal talker despite Schultz’s recent comments that he “kicks Cooper’s ass” in the ratings.

Thursday night was a case in point about Cooper’s drawing power. While he lost out to Schultz in the key A25-54 demo (179k-166k), he kicked some butt with a repeat of his show at 10 p.m. where he drew a whopping 258k in the demo, trailing only Fox’s Greta Van Susteren and nearly beating the combined ratings of MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell (162K) and HLN’s Joy Behar (124k).

By comparison, a repeat of Schultz’s show at 11 p.m. was soundly beaten by a repeat of CNN’s Erin Burnett’s show, 140k-94k.

While Cooper isn’t a threat to the dominance of Fox News’ ratings, he seems to be building a base in the 8 p.m. time slot which also helps him when the show is repeated and is a serious threat to topple both Schultz and O’Donnell and do serious damage to MSNBC’s ability to hold on to second place in the overall ratings.

I guess we’ll just have to see who kicks whose ass in the end.