CNN’s resuscitated cable-news shoutfest “Crossfire” got off to a solid start by CNN standards with its Monday night premiere, but still fell short of the cable-news competition.
Crossfire” drew 581,000 total viewers – placing it in third place behind Fox News and MSNBC — with 171,000 of them in the key 25-54 news demo, landing it in second place in the demo behind Fox.
Compared to the previous four Mondays in the 6:30 p.m. timeslot for CNN, “Crossfire” improved 44 percent in total viewers and 21 percent in the demo.
Also read: Senators Rand Paul and Bob Menendez to Be CNN’s First ‘Crossfire’ Guests (Exclusive)
On the same date a year ago, CNN averaged 319,000 total viewers and 121,000 in the demo in the timeslot.
While the highly promoted and anticipated “Crossfire” performed favorably compared to CNN’s previous performance in the time slot, in the grand scheme it still failed to match the competition by nearly all measures. In total viewers, Fox News’ first-place “Special Report” quadrupled “Crossfire,” drawing 2.402 million. (“Special Report” also took first in the demo for the timeslot, with 384,000 viewers 25-54.) “Crossfire” also fell short of the total viewership compared to MSNBC’s “Politics Nation,” which had 617,000 total viewers. (CNN did, however, best “Politics Nation” in the demo; with the latter averaging 116,000 in the 25-54 set.)
The new “Crossfire,” whose premiere date was bumped up due to the Syrian crisis, features Newt Gingrich, Stephanie Cutter, S.E. Cupp and Van Jones.