MSNBC Comes in Dead Last on One of the Biggest News Days of the Year Wednesday

May 10th, 2013 9:44 AM

Wednesday was one of the biggest news days of the year with more information coming out about Amanda Berry's captor, the Jodi Arias verdict, and the Benghazi Congressional hearings.

Despite this, MSNBC came in last amongst the four major cable news channels.

Total Viewers (Live +SD)

Total day: FNC: 2.025 | MSNBC: 454 | CNN: 922 | HLN: 788

Primetime: FNC: 2.795 | MSNBC: 758 | CNN: 1.208 | HLN: 888

As you can see, much as they did the busy news week that included the Boston Marathon bombing and the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, last month, Americans systematically avoided MSNBC Wednesday despite all that was going on in the nation.

This was also true of the all important demographic of people aged 25 to 54:


Total day: FNC: 356 | MSNBC: 119 | CNN: 338 | HLN: 294

Primetime: FNC: 471 | MSNBC: 173 | CNN: 454 | HLN: 358

The more detailed primetime numbers are also quite telling (total followed by demo):


As you can see, with the exception of The Last Word, every primetime MSNBC program came in last Wednesday typically being bested by large margins.

The numbers were even worse in the demo where every primetime MSNBC program came in dead last getting doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and even quintupled by competitors.

Wednesday's poor showing follows similar losses for MSNBC in April when this farce of a so-called "news network" dropped to third in cable news getting bested by CNN for the first time in over two years.

This all follows a Pew Research Center study published in March finding 85 percent of MSNBC's reports are commentary and not news.

Clearly, Americans are realizing this, and that MSNBC is to be avoided when serious events break.

As NewsBusters continues to ask, when are cable and satellite TV providers going to realize this and move MSNBC away from other real news networks on their channel guides?

Numbers courtesy TVNewser.