The Numbers Are In!

June 26, 2009, 6:06 pm

Big Cable Audiences for Jackson Reports

By Brian Stelter

More than 10 million people flocked to cable news channels when word of Michael Jackson’s death emerged on Thursday evening.

The audience for the cable channels, most notably CNN, more than doubled in the initial hours after Mr. Jackson’s death. In a rare win for CNN, the news channel drew a million more viewers than the Fox News Channel. (Usually Fox has a million-viewer lead over CNN.)

From 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. — the bulk of the live coverage of Mr. Jackson’s death, which was widely reported around 6:30 p.m. — CNN had an average of 3.2 million viewers, Fox News had an average of 2.3 million and MSNBC had an average of 1.1 million.

CNN’s viewership peaked during the 8 p.m. hour, when Campbell Brown and Anderson Cooper were co-anchoring breaking news coverage. The channel averaged four million viewers that hour. The next hour, when Larry King interviewed celebrities like Celine Dion and Cher, the network averaged 3.9 million viewers. At 10 p.m., CNN drew 3.7 million.

Fox News drew 3.4 million viewers at 8 p.m. for a news hour anchored by Shepard Smith. (”The O’Reilly Factor” was shelved.) At 9 p.m., Geraldo Rivera averaged 2.8 million viewers. At 10 p.m., Fox drew 2.3 million.

MSNBC averaged 1.5 million viewers in prime time.