MSNBC’s reliably liberal audience has tuned out the anti-Trump network since Election Day with a staggering 54% drop in primetime viewership.
MSNBC averaged 1.1 million viewers during the month of October but plummeted to an average audience of 736,000 on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week following President-elect Donald Trump’s historic landslide victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. MSNBC’s remarkable 31% drop comes as Fox News Channel’s viewership grew by 61% over the same time period.
MSNBC also shed 26% of its year-to-date totals, but things got even worse in primetime.
During the primetime hours of 8-11 p.m. ET, MSNBC averaged 1.8 million total viewers in October but viewership of “Alex Wagner Tonight,” “All in with Chris Hayes” and “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” have averaged only 808,000 total viewers since election night. The 54% drop represents more than half of the network’s primetime viewers, and MSNBC is also down 51% from its year-to-date totals while Fox News is up 58% in primetime compared to 2024 averages.
MSNBC is also down 16% among total day viewers and 57% during primetime among the critical demographic of adults age 25-54, which is most coveted by advertisers.
“Alex Wagner Tonight,” “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Chris Jansing Reports,” “Deadline: White House” with Nicolle Wallace, “Jose Diaz-Balart Reports,” Joy Reid’s “The ReidOut” and “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” all had their smallest audiences of the year on Friday.
It was also the smallest audience for “Alex Wagner Tonight” since the show launched in 2022 when MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow rolled back her on-air presence to only once per week.
“All in with Chris Hayes” had its lowest-rated episode since May 10, 2016 on Thursday.
MSNBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A longtime TV news executive who asked to remain anonymous noted that MSNBC’s audience appeared to love to hate Trump during his first administration – but that doesn’t seem to be the case any longer.
“As its poor post-election night ratings show, MSNBC should not expect a ‘Trump Bump’ this time around. Even liberals are rejecting its condescending tone and the divisive rhetoric of its new standard-bearer, Joy Reid,” the longtime TV news executive said.
MSNBC viewer Sharon Waxman, who is the founder and CEO of Hollywood trade publication TheWrap, wrote that the “media got it wrong” and she needs a break from the noise.
“If you’re like me, you haven’t turned on the news since last Tuesday when Donald Trump won the election. Personally, I can’t bear to listen to another minute of wisdom from Joy Reid, my friend Lawrence O’Donnell or the admirable Rachel Maddow,” Waxman wrote.
“I can’t do it,” Waxman continued. “I’m not saying I’ll never watch or listen again. But – am I alone here? – my entire body recoils from listening to more claptrap from the same claptrapping apparatus.”
MSNBC personalities have not taken Harris’ loss particularly well, as hosts and pundits have repeatedly tried to assign blame for President-elect Trump’s landslide victory.
Stephanie Ruhle said Americans were gambling with the country’s future by choosing Trump as their next president. Claire McCaskill cried on-air after watching Harris’ concession speech. Joy Reid essentially blamed White women for Harris’ North Carolina loss and said Black women have “resigned from the save America coalition.” And Al Sharpton claimed that misogyny and racism among voters may have cost Harris the election.
MSNBC host Jonathan Capehard said he was still “grappling” with how “someone was elected that ran a campaign that was openly hostile, openly racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, transphobic” while MSNBC’s on-screen graphic said “FINDING HOPE IN A DARK TIME.” Jen Psaki even said the Democratic Party over-relied on “never-Trump” Republicans and should’ve made more of an effort to reach voters who had left the Democratic Party.
This rhetoric came after MSNBC spent years promoting “never-Trump” Republicans, targeting hardcore Democrats and largely dismissing non-liberals.
MSNBC recently touted a ratings victory, noting that the liberal network topped CNN on a presidential election night for the first time in network history. However, NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck feels it was simply an anomaly.
“While MSNBC thought they may have struck gold with the election night ratings, they should have realized by now that Americans only tuned in so they could see the meltdowns, not that they viewed it as consistently and intellectually stimulating television,” Houck told Fox News Digital.
“During CNN’s tumbles in past years, they were falling behind reruns of ‘Golden Girls’ and ‘Peppa Pig,’ so it’s probably best if MSNBC doesn’t look at their ratings anytime soon if they want to stay anywhere close to their happy place,” Houck added. “Liberal viewers have to be emotionally, psychologically, and metaphorically distraught. They’re beyond forlorn.”
Houck doesn’t believe finger pointing and MSNBC hosts continuing to push far-left talking points will bring back progressive viewers anytime soon.
“The somber excuses blaming everyone from working-class women to Hispanic men to conservative media seem to be serving as only temporary balms to the scorching results. Chris Hayes and Alex Wagner have a brand to commit to where the only change the left will have to do is go even further left, so it’s a stale product no one will want to listen to going forward,” Houck said.
MSNBC has seen viewers jump ship on the heels of news they didn’t like in the past. In 2019, Rachel Maddow’s viewership took a dive when Special Counsel Robert Mueller declared there was no collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia despite the far-left host spending years pushing the Russian collusion narrative.
This time, Trump swept every battleground state after years of MSNBC hosts and pundits insisting that he was a threat to democracy. OutKick’s Bobby Burack feels that “Trump’s decisive victory demonstrated that the left-wing cable news networks have lost their influence.”
“MSNBC exhausted every resource at their disposal to stop Donald Trump from achieving victory, eventually stooping to a plot to depict him as the second coming of Adolf Hitler, the most ruthless dictator in modern world history. It didn’t work. The lies, the hysteria, and the besmirchment only made Trump more popular,” Burack wrote.
All data courtesy of Nielsen Media Research.
Fox News Digital’s Nikolas Lanum and Yael Halon contributed to this report.
Fox News and OutKick share common ownership.
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