All 126 Cable Channels Ranked by 2022 Viewership: CNN No Longer in Top 5

2022-12-16

Fox News Channel closed out its seventh straight year as the most-watched cable-TV channel in primetime. (It was also No. 1 in total-day viewers, if you were wondering.) Also once again, ESPN was second, MSNBC third, and HGTV fourth. Fifth place is where things got shaken up — and probably where things got uncomfortable inside of the Warner Bros. Discovery offices.

For the first time since 2019, CNN dropped out of the Top 5, according to Nielsen data, falling all the way to No. 10. On the bright side, fellow Turner channel TNT finished fifth instead. Nos. 6-10, in order, were: Hallmark Channel, TBS, TLC, INSP (fka The Inspiration Network), and CNN.

TNT, TBS, and CNN started 2022 as part of AT&T’s WarnerMedia. In April, WarnerMedia and TLC parent Discovery, Inc. merged and formed Warner Bros. Discovery. For David Zaslav’s portfolio of cable channels, the below ranker presents a real good news-bad news situation — but that pretty much sums up the entirety of his 2022.

We should point out here that the Nielsen ranker we’ve used for this story is not inclusive of delayed (mostly DVR) viewing. That disproportionally rewards live news (Fox News, MSNBC, CNN) and sports (ESPN).

This year’s last-place cable channel was G4, which was revived in November 2021 and didn’t make it 12 months. The brief G4 2.0 run averaged just 1,000 overall viewers in primetime. Last year’s last-place channel, beIN Sports, remained in 124th place (G4 and GalaNovelas — fka TLNovelas — were the new pair measured this year, bringing the grand total to 126) with another 3,000 viewers per evening — just like ’21.

Pursuit Channel dropped from 117th place (of 124) with 8,000 total viewers last year to 125th place (of 126) with just 2,000 viewers this year. With that trajectory, Pursuit Channel is very much in pursuit of dead-last place in 2023.

See all 126 channels ranked by total 2022 Monday-Sunday primetime (8-11 p.m.) viewers below. The final column is the viewership averages, in thousands. (Add a comma and three zeroes to the end of each; for example, Fox News averaged 2.33 million viewers, History Channel averaged 694,000, Fuse averaged 8,000, and so on.)

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