Hannity & Palin beat Morgan & Winfrey in last night's ratings game

Not bad for someone whose career is over /sarc
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In last night's cable news ratings cage match, Sarah Palin outdraw Oprah Winfrey as the two were guests on competing programs in the 9PM EST time slot on Fox News and CNN respectively:

Palin appeared on Fox's "Hannity" to give her first interview in the wake of media attacks on her over the Arizona massacre while Winfrey was the prize guest on the debut of "Piers Morgan Tonight", CNN's successor to the Larry King Show.

[...]

The numbers according to Broadcasting & Cable:

Hannity: 2.4 million, 600,000 in 25-54demo.

Morgan: 2.1 million, 521,000 in 25-54 demo.

Rachel Maddow on MSNBC: 1.1 million, 342,000 in 25-54 demo.

As Kristinn points out, The New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, New York Magazine and Broadcasting & Cable all headlined Morgan in their reports, even though Gov. Palin helped Hannity win the ratings battle. In contrast, The LA Times' "Show Tracker" blog titled its post "Sarah Palin upstages Piers Morgan's CNN premiere with Oprah Winfrey":

Morgan's heavily promoted CNN show got off to a decent if not thrilling start in the ratings Monday night, scoring 2.1 million total viewers according to the Nielsen Co.

But Fox News Channel, which employs Palin as an analyst, was not to be outdone. The network shrewdly scheduled the former Alaska governor as a guest on "Hannity," where she attacked the mainstream media for connecting her to the recent shooting in Tucson.

As a result, Morgan had to settle for second place to Sean Hannity, who delivered 2.4 million viewers. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow was third with 1.1 million.

Even so, the Morgan premiere at 9 p.m. delivered a rare dose of healthy ratings for CNN. The program more than tripled the audience "Larry King Live" was averaging in its final days late last year.

Reuters also acknowledged that Gov. Palin was the stronger draw: "Piers Morgan gets big CNN debut, but beaten by Palin"

How dare that woman attract more viewers than the sainted Oprah!

- JP

Read 'em and weep, Palin detractors

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Matt Drudge reports that Sarah Palin's Fox News special Thursday night scored the third-highest rating of the evening among the major cable news networks:

CABLE NEWS RACE
THURS., APRIL 1, 2010

FOXNEWS O'REILLY 2,981,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 2,256,000
FOXNEWS PALIN 2,073,000
FOXNEWS BECK 2,014,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 1,877,000
FOXNEWS SHEP 1,658,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 989,000
MSNBC MADDOW 950,000
CNN KING 839,000
CNN COOPER 820,000
CNNHN BEHAR 641,000

In its time slot, according to the Nielson numbers revealed by TV Newser, "Real American Stories with Sarah Palin" captured more than twice the number of viewers in the 25 to 54 age demographic of any of its competitors, including "Anderson Cooper 360" on CNN, "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" on MSNBC and "Nancy Grace" on HLN:



Among all viewers, the Sarah Palin special had more viewers than Cooper, Olbermann and Grace could manage combined:


As Frank Sinatra is quoted as saying, “The best revenge is massive success.”

h/t: HotAirPundit

- JP

This joke's on Creepy Dave and his apologists

Our friend Andrew Malcom tells the tale:

TV audience ratings come out and guess what? They're shockers! The old guy got a brief boost all right during the controversy. In fact, he drew larger audiences for three of the week's five nights.

But over at another network -- we'll call it NBC -- his competition, a young new guy who'd only been on the job for 10 shows, still won the entire week.

More Americans chose to watch this tall new guy who never mentioned the stink than the grumpy old one who started it. According to Nielsen Media Research, the new host also won among key demographic groups too, like 18 to 34 year olds and 18 to 49.

Hilarious.

Take that, all of you media pigs who defended Letterman and dissed Gov. Palin in your columns and on your blogs. Take that, every one of you who said the governor "started" a war with Creepy Dave that she could never win. Take that, you clowns who wrote that there's too much of Sarah in the news, while the sick sexist slug you defended is on network television every weekday night. And take that, those of you who opined that Gov. Palin was unwittingly helping Creepy Dave vault to the top of the ratings.

Get this through your obtuse liberal skulls:

1. Conan pwned Letterman.
2. Creepy Dave apologized after his momma made him do it; Sarah accepted.
3. She won; he lost.

End of story.

- JP