The steadily insightful Tim Cuprisin explains The Cable Ratings Game lucidly, as he always does, writing in The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
There's an interesting second-place battle among the three cable all-news channels.
July numbers out this week from Nielsen Media Research show CNN and MSNBC are neck and neck, with both of them well behind longtime first-place finisher Fox News Channel.
The top-rated MSNBC show: "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," with 672,000 viewers. CNN's now-canceled "Paula Zahn Now" averaged 546,000 viewers.
But both are in the shadow of the No. 1 show in all cable news, which airs in the same 7 p.m. hour: The Bill "O'Reilly Factor," which averaged 1.9 million viewers.
Fox News had 11 of the top 13 shows. Rounding out the top five are "Hannity & Colmes," "The Fox Report With Shepard Smith," "Special Report With Brit Hume," and "On the Record With Greta Van Susteren."
