Last Updated on January 8, 2020
The “Tucker Carlson Tonight” television program on Fox News dominated cable news coverage of the Iran situation alongside “Hannity” Tuesday night, pulling in 5.6 million viewers.
Some have attributed the extremely high viewership to the national security crisis rather than Carlson’s popularity, but the fact that “Tucker Carlson Tonight” pulled in double the amount of viewership as cable competitor (CNN), that theory seems unlikely.
According to TV By The Numbers, Carlson pulled in 5,698,000 viewers and scored a high 0.8 rating in the 18-49 age demographic.
In contrast, no CNN program broke 3 million viewers. The highest they could muster was “Anderson Cooper 360’s” 2.8 million, followed by “Cuomo Prime Time” at 2.7 million.
Given that a significant source of CNN’s viewership are public areas such as airports and government buildings, the ratings gulf seems to stretch even wider.
MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show” was also easily eclipsed by “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” lagging nearly two and a half million viewers behind at 3.3 million.
“Tucker Carson Tonight” was only surpassed across all digital and cable networks by sister program “Hannity,” which pulled in barely 40,000 more viewers than Carlson.
Fox’s lowest performing shows still stayed above 4 million, dwarfing CNN and MSNBC.
