Those with any doubt what a good move it was for Fox News to pick up Glenn Beck look no further than the chart below. His average viewership at 5pm exceeded the combined viewership of his three cable news network competitors every night in September. On six nights he had twice the combined viewership.
This chart was a collaboration between two of our readers. Reader Dave created the chart using the data patiently assembled by reader MikeS.
Glenn Beck vs. The Combined Competition TV Ratings, September 2009:
For complete information on all cable news ratings check our daily cable news ratings posts.
Anybody else wanting to produce trend charts of any of our other data, drop me an email.
Nielsen Cable Network Coverage Estimates (as of September, 2009)
CNN/HLN: 99.10 million HHs
CNBC: 96.78 million HHs
FNC: 96.26 million HHs
MSNBC: 92.64 million HHs
Nielsen TV Ratings Data: ©2009 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
Love him or hate him, these are amazing numbers for Beck.
Wow what happened that one day around 9/8ish? lol Glenn Almost came close to his competition. Get it together Glenn!
I noticed that too.
On 9/7/2009
Beck = 1,733,00
Competition = 1,519,00
If anyone has a theory on what happened that day, chime in. I’m curious.
Rerun, power outage in Texas, conservatives en-rout to teaparties, ???
oops … lost a couple of zeros there.
Beck = 1,733,000
Competition = 1,519,000
If anything I would almost guess an error in nielsen’s numbers. lol
Its just really odd that one random day like that.
I don’t know why but I want to know this, msnbc had a special on and it was the day the text for obama’s speech to schools was released.
Was that near the time of the “Obama is a racist” debacle?
It was Labour day
I would suspect a special on one of the other news channels, but their numbers did not go up. Beck just went down? Strange?
Was it the first night of Monday Night Football?
Labor Day. Yes, but it is still strange that Beck took a hit and the others did not. Is there something I don’t know regarding conservatives and Labor Day?
No that was 7/28 on Fox and Friends. Not sure when the “boycott” started.
FOUND IT:
I don’t remember this at all but Joe “Pags” Pagliarulo was in for Beck that day
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/show/2009-09-07/
Labour day was on a Wednesday this year?
Charlie … Good call on the Beck stand in.
My calendar says Sept 7th was a Monday. Beck must have taken the Holiday off.
Looks like ‘Pags’ covered him on the radio. Not sure who did the TV show, but probably not Beck.
I am just grateful that there are 300 million Americans and less thasn 4 million watch this (journalistic ? ) travesty at all.
If this is correct, that is a sad commentary on the political IQ’s of that part of the American electorate
The other 296 million Americans are probably still at work like me at 5pm Eastern time. Either that or their watching Sponge Bob
The reason he had low numbers on that day was because they interupted his show to bring the messiahs speech. Its hilarious when fox news does that and there numbers plummet. We want glenn fixed news not obama. Morons.
Wow I was wrong on a few accounts… LOL, its the start of the NHL season, and well games started today at 12pm in Finland, so I been in hockey watching mode all day, beer junk food the whole nine yards.
First I was looking at October not September for the date lol
Secondly I think I do remember his show being a re-broadcast of older segments and such. That explains why I couldn’t remember another person standing in for him on TV.
Napolitano has stood in a few times for him I think on TV. But the last few times he has been off they just showed cobbled together shows from parts of other recent shows.
For a blowhard putz like this achieving relative (cable) success, just shows how nasty some Americans are. Some time in the future historians will point to this type of entertainment as a leading cause of the decline of the U.S.A. I’m embarrassed for my country and my species.