Sean Hannity Extends Win Streak Over Rachel Maddow To 52 Weeks

At one point, it seemed MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow might steal away the title of most-watched cable news host from Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity. Today, the better question might be this: how long can Hannity extend his winning streak?

Fox’s 9 p.m. ET star finished the week of March second in first place, with an average total audience of 4 million viewers, well ahead of Maddow, whose average total audience—in a week that included high profile exclusive interviews with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—was 2.8 million viewers.

Among viewers 25-54, the demographic group most coveted by national advertisers, Hannity led with 666,000 to Maddow’s 498,000 according to ratings data compiled by Nielsen.

The weekly win is the 52nd straight for Hannity, who faced a challenge in 2018 from Maddow, who finished in March of that year in first place overall with a total audience of 3.058 million viewers, just ahead of Hannity’s 3.000 million. The following month, Hannity jumped ahead, 3.264 million to Maddow’s 3.016 million.

Maddow benefited then from MSNBC’s resurgent ratings, which were up 24% compared to the previous year, but it wasn’t enough to relegate Hannity and Fox News to anything like an enduring second-place status. Hannity now has a solid year of weekly wins, and the network remains unrivaled for first place, with an average total audience in prime time of 3.259 million viewers. MSNBC was second in prime with 2.099 million, followed by CNN which had 1.345 million.

Fox was further boosted by last week’s presidential election town hall session with President Trump, which set an all-time record audience for the town hall format, delivering a total audience of 4.2 million viewers and 744,000 viewers in the key demo.