Rebecca Takes on the Cable News, Week of February 5: Olympics Put a Dent In Generally Strong Ratings

Rebecca Takes on the Cable News is back for season two! A lot has happened for cable news, including a fantastic January for many shows filled with solid gains. Now, the shows face the Olympics, and the effects are showing already. This is Rebecca Takes on the Cable News!

MSNBC:
NBC's week was actually realtively decent in terms of their rankings in the chart. Most of their shows  held their position or even climbed a bit. Most notable of all is The Rachel Maddow Show, which cruised past Hannity this week for a comfortable victory. It regains its crown after losing it to Anderson Cooper 360 during the last edition of Rebecca Takes on the Cable News. Its lead-out, The Last Word, wasn't quite so lucky. It lost steam and its spot on the cable podium, sinking to fifth. It also lost to The Ingraham Angle for the first time, though it does remain MSNBC's #2 show. All In with Chris Hayes ticked up a spot to tie for seventh, a typical position for it. Deadline: White House had an impressive rebound from 16th to 12th, typic CNN's The Lead. Below it, Morning Joe and Velshi & Ruhle held at unimpressive positions, with both delivering weaker results than in mid-December. The network as a whole held its position as #2 in primetime. All in all, an okay-but-not great week for MSNBC.

CNN:
All in all, it wasn't CNN's week. Pretty much everything fell in the rankings, and most shows gave performances that were far from their best. Erin Burnett OutFront was prett much their shining star, and only it could hold steady in the rankings. Anderson Cooper 360 remained CNN's #1, but it saw a harsh fall, not only off the podium but out of the top 5, after a #1 performance last time around. Their lower-rated programs also faltered, with a truly terrible performance from Wolf (down to 16 from 11), and mediocre performances from The Lead and At This Hour, which both slipped in positions. None of the shows really excelled, and it showed. The network's primetime ranking plummeted from first to last.

Fox News:
It really is difficult to assess Fox News primetime's performance this week. On the one hand, they had  some really great performances. On the other, some of their performances really were quite heinous. However, those great performances outweighed the heinous ones, and they won the title of first in 18-49 AND viewers for the first time. Much of the credit deserves to go to Hannity, which scored a week-high 0.4 for the network on Monday. It's the network's biggest assett by far this week. Meanwhile, The Ingraham Angle and Tucker Carlson Tonight also had some decent performances, and both made the cable news Top 5. The strange alternative to these mediocre primetime performances is the pretty great performances by Fox & Friends and Shepard Smith Reporting. They both soared on the chart, and topped many of their rivals.


And now for the Rebecca Takes on the News chart, the reason you're all probably here.

And the network rankings for the week of 2/5:

What did you think of this week's cable news developments? Who are your winners and losers this week? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

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