Comparing Fox News’ ratings to its cable rivals is a bit stale in 2025. The more appropriate move is to look at how it stacks up against all channels, including the three major networks — and when looking at the second quarter, it is doing pretty well on that front.
Fox News came in second place when it comes to weekday ratings during the second quarter of 2025, narrowly edging past ABC and beating NBC as well in terms of Monday-Friday viewers, according to an early look at quarterly Nielsen data on Tuesday.
The home to “Jesse Watters Primetime” and “Gutfeld!” averaged 3 million weekday viewers during the second quarter, which was 77% more viewers than TNT and 81% more viewers compared to ESPN during the quarter, the fourth and fifth-ranked channels in terms of weekday viewership. Fox News also just wrapped its second-best June ever, coming in second behind its weekday and full-day ratings for June 2020, when COVID-19 was driving the news.
CBS won the entire quarter when it comes to weekday ratings, pulling in 3.42 million viewers. Top weekday performers for The Tiffany Network include “Matlock,” which was pulling in more than 9.5 million TV viewers when its first season wrapped in April, and “FBI,” which routinely had between 5 and 6 million broadcast viewers.
MSNBC, meanwhile, was the sixth most-watched channel during the week in Q2, pulling in 1.27 million viewers. CNN averaged 559,000 weekday viewers during the quarter, according to Nielsen data.
What worked for Fox News in the second quarter? The channel continued to benefit from exclusive interviews with prominent members of the Trump Administration, as it did in the first quarter, when it had the best ratings quarter in cable news history. Maria Bartiromo interviewed President Trump while Bret Baier had an exclusive interview with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu on June 15 — two conversations that the channel, and others, were able to point back to in the days that followed.
Eric Adams has also become a regular guest on Fox News, with New York City’s mayor stopping by “Fox & Friends” on June 16, and later calling competitor and Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani an “academic elitist” during another interview on Monday.
The recent coverage of the U.S. airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities was a win for Fox News, too. The channel averaged 3.3 million primetime viewers last week, topping ABC, CBS and NBC, which averaged between 1.9 million and 2.4 million viewers. And since Memorial Day, the channel has topped CBS by about 900,000 average weekday primetime viewers.
When looking at the full week performance for the three cable news channels, Fox News averaged 2.63 million daily viewers during the second quarter, up 25% year-over-year. CNN averaged 538,000 viewers, which was down 13% from last year, and MSNBC averaged 1.20 million viewers, which was a 15% drop from the second quarter of 2024.
In other weekday news coverage news, “NBC Nightly News” enjoyed a 7% jump year-over-year in the 25-54 age demo in June, coinciding with the program’s switch from veteran host Lester Holt to Tom Llamas.
“ABC World News Tonight” with David Muir continued to pace the broadcast news pack, with its total viewership up 1% to 7.21 million viewers in June, while “NBC Nightly News” averaged 5.67 million total viewers for the month, up 0.4% from last June, according to Nielsen data. “CBS Evening News” was down 10% year-over-year in June to 3.93 million total viewers.
Tess Patton contributed to this report.
