The Last Time This TV Rating Happened, It Was 2000

A milestone in the cable wars: MSNBC has beaten Fox News in total daytime viewers for the first time since 2000. For the week of Dec. 17-21, MSNBC averaged 1.56 million viewers between 6am and 2pm, ahead of Fox (1.54 million) and CNN (975,000), according to a release from NBCUniversal. The last time the liberal network beat its counterpart on the right in this metric was Nov. 6, 2000, just ahead of the election that would put George W. Bush in the White House. MSNBC also came out on top in the key daytime demographic of 25- to 54-year-olds for the first time since 2001, reports Politico.

In terms of prime time, MSNBC beat its competitors for the fourth straight week, with Rachel Maddow's show No. 1 at 3.2 million viewers. Fox's Sean Hannity was off that week, though the AP notes that his ratings have been slipping since the election. Overall, Hannity will still end 2018 as the most popular personality on cable news, a title he held last year as well. However, his show has pulled in an average 2.76 million viewers from the election through Dec. 17, a drop of 19% from the previous month. He's also down 30% in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic. (More MSNBC stories.)