The headlines around a certain cable news network’s astronomical drop in viewership are harrowing: In the weeks since the presidential election, the network’s primetime audience has fallen by about half, sparking scores of stories about a troubled operation.
MSNBC in 2024? Yes — but also Fox News in 2020, or CNN in 2016, and all three in 2012. The drop in viewership at MSNBC is very real: In the three weeks after the Nov. 5 election, the network averaged 661,000 primetime viewers, fewer than half of what it drew each night in October. Lost among the headlines and hand-wringing in media circles, though, is the fact that — to some extent, at least — craters like this pop up after every presidential election.
Since 2004, primetime ratings for CNN, Fox News and MSNBC have fallen off by an average of 38 percent in the month following an election…
