Summer regularly brings some of the most iconic TV screens of the year, from the crunch of bats on baseball’s opening day to the stifled voices of the last rounds of the PGA Tour. Overall, these systems are also among the best rated systems on television in the summer months, however, 2020 has damaged all rules.
With the coronavirus dominating media policy since the start of the year, cable news has noticed big jumps in audiences, yet neither CNN nor MSNBC has been able to offer an audience as giant as Fox News. The network’s ratings remained strong, some primary sports, first cancelled or delayed due to the pandemic, returned to television.
On July 24, ESPN’s policy of Premier League Baseball’s opening day featured a high-profile game between the New York Yankees and the Washington Nationals. The game attracted an average overall audience of 4,005 million people and ended up as the fourth-rated screen on television that night. But Hannity of Fox and Tucker Carlson Tonight won the big game, with Hannity occupying the most sensitive place on television with 4.340 million audience, followed by CBS Young Sheldon’s Prime-Time screen (4.111 million audience) and Tucker Carlson Tonight (4,016 million). Training
When basketball returned to prime time Thursday night, TNT was expecting a giant audience for the thrilling showdown between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers, and they understood. With a total of 3.4 million ratings, the game more than doubled the average TNT audience for an NBA regular season broadcast. And yet even LeBron James leading the Lakers to a narrow victory is not enough to beat Hannity of Fox News Channel and Tucker Carlson Tonight, who delivered four million and 3.8 million audiences respectively, according to the audience’s knowledge compiled through Nielsen.
Fox News’ normal prime-time programming also attracted more audiences than the 152nd edition of Belmont Stakes on NBC and the final rounds of the PGA Memorial golf tournament on CBS.
Cable networks expect the audience to remain the best as Republican and Democratic conventions, virtual and probably absent from the same prime-time drama, begin the final weeks of a blank-space fight. It is not known whether sports, or shows, was, can beat Fox News.
Mark Joyella has been a presenter and journalist in Miami, Orlando, Tampa and New York. He also reported on Australia’s top-rated morning network screen and worked
Mark Joyella has been a presenter and journalist in Miami, Orlando, Tampa and New York. He has also reported on Australia’s top-rated morning network screen and has worked on cable news for CNN and Fox. His writings on politics and media have been published in Adweek, New York Post, Orlando Sentinel, BuzzFeed and The Dallas Morning News.