Fox News Tops Rivals In Ratings For Obama’s Syria Speech

President Barack Obama told the American people last night that he was going to give diplomacy a chance in the Syria crisis before ordering military action. For Fox News Channel, victory came more easily. The cable news network drew 4.042 million viewers for Obama’s speech Tuesday, with 939,000 in the adults 25-54 demo for the 9-9:17 PM ET live address from the White House. That’s more than double what rival CNN got with its 1.914 million viewers, and a solid 300,000 more than the 683,000 demo viewers the Jeff Zucker-run network pulled in the same time period, according to Nielsen. While MSNBC did not break out their numbers for the speech, the network still came third with 1.196 million viewers and 310,000 in 25-54 between 8-10 PM. Interestingly, in the post-speech analysis, led by anchor Bret Baier, FNC’s numbers didn’t fall that much. From 9:17-10 PM, the news network averaged 3.6 million viewers with 830,000 adults 25-54. Led by Piers Morgan, CNN’s 9:30 – 10 PM post speech coverage got 1.56 million viewers with 565,000 in the demo. Broadcasts nets NBC, CBS, Fox and ABC also cut into regularly scheduled programming to run the president’s speech live. Over primetime Tuesday, FNC won the night in viewership and the demo among the cable news networks. Fox had 3.078 million viewers with 651,000 in the 25-54s from 8-11 PM last night. CNN had 1.21 million viewers with 434,000 the demo, and MSNBC had 1.11 million viewers and 297,000 adults 25-54.

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