Sunday, October 13, 2013

Head of MSNBC Asks for ‘Investigation’ Into Fox’s ‘Impossible’ Ratings Spike

Something’s afoul in Fox Land, at least according to MSNBC President Phil Griffin.

Fox News debuted Megyn Kelly’s new show to much fanfare and hype this week, but the night her show debuted, MSNBC’s ratings were actually as good if not better for three hours of primetime scheduling on Fox. According to Griffin, the next day is when things started looking strange to him. The ratings for Tuesday night not only rebounded, but they nearly doubled, which to Griffin raises red flags.

“On the night that Fox News debuted their three shows, we either tied or beat them in those hours,” said Griffin in a press briefing.  What Griffin was referring to was the fact that on the Monday that Kelly’s show debuted, she lost to Rachel Maddow’s show in the same time slot and in the following hour the ratings for the two stations were virtually tied. The next night it was a rather sharp turning of the tables, with Maddow’s numbers plummeting as Kelly’s ballooned.

Griffin called into question the second night’s numbers saying,  ”Tuesday — you guys should be doing some investigations; I have never seen it in all my years of cable — same overnight, same everything. And they doubled their ratings in a day? It is impossible.” Griffin said he has “never seen it. They did election-night numbers in the demo Tuesday,” inferring that the kind of numbers they were claiming to have gotten matched the highest levels of viewership cable networks get during their coverage of election nights, though as The Hollywood Reporter pointed out, Fox only got about a third of their actual election night coverage on Tuesday night — about 2.7 million viewers compared to the more than 7 million that watched during the last presidential election.

No comment or statement from Nielsen has been recorded, nor has any response from Fox ‘News’ been issued.

AHT: Wouldn't surprise me if all their ratings weren't cooked somehow.

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