Fox News Has Most Viewers On All Of Cable TV In Prime Time Last Week

(By Steve Krakauer, Mediaite) - Back in July, Fox News SVP Bill Shine told Mediaite the network had a new goal – not just be the best cable news network, but be the top cable network overall. “We have news events that pop up and you never know when that will happen,” said Shine. “It’s difficult but we’ll see if we can do it.”

For the first time since the 2008 Election, Fox News was #1 on all of cable last week.

FNC topped USA Network (the usual #1) in prime time, with FNC averaging 3,213,000 viewers last week and USA averaging 3,194,000. No other network came close. In cable news competition, CNN ranked 22nd (980,000) and MSNBC was 25th (761,000).

In total today, FNC finished 3rd. CNN was 19th and MSNBC 31st.

There were some major news events that contributed to FNC’s big win, with the Massachusetts election Tuesday night and Haiti coverage throughout the week. But the victory was notable – FNC hasn’t been #1 since the week of November 3, 2008, and it shows just how competitive the network can be when going head-to-head with non-news cable entities.

They won’t be able to sustain the #1 spot on a regular basis yet, but this puts them in the discussion. And that’s as impressive as it is surprising.