Has “Piers Morgan Live” found its new Piers Morgan in Bill Weir?
Weir, filling in for the departing Morgan in CNN’s 9 p.m. hour, topped Fox News’ competition “The Kelly File” in the cable news key demo, adults 25-54. Weir pulled in 373,000 viewers versus Megyn Kelly’s 353,000 on Thursday evening.
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However, Kelly topped Weir in total viewers with 2 million total viewers versue Weir’s 1 million.
In the key demo, CNN’s “Erin Burnett Outfront” also came close to “On the Record With Greta Van Susteren,” but ultimately fell shy by a mere 9,000 viewers, 347,000 to 356,000. Van Susteren’s overall audience size provided a much more substantial gap for Fox News.
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Across the rest of the evening, Fox News won the cable news night in both total viewers and the demo, with one other exception: “Anderson Cooper 360” beat “The O’Reilly Factor” at 11 p.m. in the demo with 308,000 viewers versus 277,000. “O’Reilly” topped “Cooper” in overall audience size.
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MSNBC came in third place in each hour by both metrics, except for 10 p.m., when “Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell” beat out CNN’s “Chicagoland” to take second place in total audience, with 713,000 viewers to 521,000. “Chicagoland” topped “Last Word” for second in the demo, while Fox News’ “Hannity” easily beat both.