Amid the mounting tragedy in the Middle East, Fox News and CNN are the early winners in the cable network ratings battle, flexing their on-the-ground foreign reporting muscles, while MSNBC suffered a dip at the beginning of the conflict from which it has yet to recover.
In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists in Israel, in which they massacred over 1,400 Israeli citizens, all three cable news channels saw viewership boosts of varying degrees, but Fox and CNN saw the main benefit.
From Oct. 9 to Oct. 15, Fox News scored 1.57 million average total viewers, a 22% increase from the week of Oct.