Fox News tops cable ratings during Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings

Fox News topped the ratings among all cable news networks during all three days of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings this week. 

On Monday, Fox won in both total viewership and the targeted 25-54 age demographic, garnering 1.7 million viewers as Jackson made her opening statement.

During the same timeframe, CNN drew in 919,000 viewers and MSNBC came in third with 795,000, according to Nielsen Media Research data. 

Fox won the day again on Tuesday, outpacing CNN and MSNBC every hour of the day, both with total viewers and within 25-54 target demographic.

On Wednesday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Fox News Channel again topped the cable landscape, garnering 1.8 million viewers. 

During this week’s hearing, Republican lawmakers grilled Jackson on a number of topics, ranging from decisions that she made as a judge to her views on gender and identity politics. Several lawmakers spent time on Fox’s airwaves before and after the hearings, previewing questions they planned to ask Jackson or reacting to her responses. 

All of the networks over the last several days have had to balance Jackson’s marathon confirmation hearings against ongoing live coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which hit the one-month mark this week. 

Each of the cable and national news networks spent at least a portion of the day on Thursday covering President Biden’s emergency trip to Europe and speech from Brussels.