OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The popular Fox News show “The Five” continues to dominate cable news ratings.
The 5 p.m. show far-outpaced its competition on Monday, pulling in 3.53 million total viewers. The second highest-rated show on cable news was “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” which racked up 3.11 million total viewers.
“In the key 25-54 age demographic, The Five also landed in first place with 498,000 viewers. Tucker Carlson brought in 409,000 viewers to come in second in the demo. Rachel Maddow led MSNBC with 2.28 million total viewers, making her the most-watched female host on Monday night as she just beat out Laura Ingraham’s 2.02 million total viewers. Jake Tapper led CNN with 541,000 total viewers at 5 p.m.,” Mediaite reported.
Below is a breakdown of ratings:
Total viewers:
CNN: 397,000
Fox News: 1.70 million
MSNBC: 933,000
25-54 Demo:
CNN: 77,000
Fox News: 246,000
MSNBC: 103,000
Here are the prime time averages — encompassing shows which air from 8-11 p.m. — in total viewers and the 25-54 demo.
Total viewers:
CNN: 491,000
Fox News: 2.53 million
MSNBC: 1.71 million
25-54 Demo:
CNN: 102,000
Fox News: 313,000
MSNBC: 166,000
This has also been a huge year for host Greg Gutfeld, who co-hosts “The Five” and has a popular late-night show on the weekends.
Gutfeld’s 11 p.m. show on Fox News landed second in all of cable news in the main 25-54 demographic on Friday, beating out The Ingraham Angle (with guest host Jason Chaffetz) and “The Five,” which he co-hosts.
Gutfeld’s show drew a whopping 2.02 million total viewers, which beat out Ingraham’s show at 1.9 million. Gutfeld! fell just short of beating “The Five,” which drew 2.92 million total viewers.
Fox News dominated the cable news ratings in May, with Gutfeld being part of two shows in the top 7:
–Fox News | 5 p.m. /The Five: 3,279,000 / 25 telecasts
–Fox News | 8 p.m. / Tucker Carlson Tonight: 3,233,000 / 22 telecasts
–Fox News | 9 p.m./ Hannity: 2,720,000 / 21 telecasts
–Fox News | 7 p.m./ Jesse Watters Primetime: 2,646,000 / 17 telecasts
–Fox News | 6 p.m. / Special Report with Bret Baier: 2,475,000 / 25 telecasts
–Fox News | 10 p.m./The Ingraham Angle: 2,256,000 / 23 telecasts
–Fox News | 11 p.m./Gutfeld! : 2,001,000 / 23 telecasts
–MSNBC | 9 p.m./The Rachel Maddow Show: 1,950,000 / 9 telecasts
–Fox News | 12 p.m. / Outnumbered: 1,774,000 / 26 telecasts
–Fox News | 9-10 a.m./10-11 a.m./America’s Newsroom: 1,709,000 / 50 telecasts
As noted by Forbes, Gutfeld’s weekend late-night show has been delivering massive viewership.
Like the way CNN is all but guaranteed to remain a favorite punching bag for Fox News Channel’s late-night host Greg Gutfeld, whose 11 pm show “Gutfeld!” has been a ratings powerhouse since its launch a little over a year ago now. Monday, by the way, was an important day for Gutfeld as well, marking the debut of a newer, expanded studio for his show — the second-most-watched late-night program in all of broadcast and cable.
In fact, you could argue that at least some of Gutfeld’s success (an average of almost 2 million viewers in April alone, topping Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon) is best understood within the context of missteps and ratings decline at CNN. To say nothing of the ideological like-mindedness across most of the late-night landscape.
“People don’t go to entertainment for homework,” Gutfeld told Forbes. “You don’t pay for homework. And it feels like there’s been this modern kind of woke culture where everything is being informed with a lesson you have to learn — it’s like, I don’t need to be lectured. I didn’t come here to be told how this is oppression and I have to, like, learn about these things. I came to be entertained.”
“If you’ve been watching my stuff, I spend a lot of time talking about media. Because I know the internal flaws of it. The Gutfeld show became successful because it came at exactly the right time.” he said. “People have had it with being told that every institution in your life is somehow oppressor vs. oppressed.”
“My show is deliberately surreal and absurd because I’m absurd. I call it the Dean Wormer effect. Dean Wormer was the bad guy in Animal House and was always kind of the hood ornament of what a Republican was, and everybody else has fun, right? … My goal was always to flip that. So that we’re the people having fun, and the left, Democrats, are the scolds. You see that now, with even Bill Maher saying, my God, my side is humorless and the other side is having fun.”
