Bad Year? 2016 Was Great for Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC Ratings

Liberal host finishes year with the highest-rated 9 p.m. show in 20-year history of network

Maddow
MSNBC

For Rachel Maddow, 2016 was a very good year. “The Rachel Maddow Show” ended 2016 with the highest-rated show in the 9 p.m. timeslot in the 20-year history of MSNBC.

Maddow averaged 1.46 million total viewers, up 72 percent from her 2015 totals. Among the key news demo of adults age 25-54, Maddow averaged 347,000 for an increase of 115 percent compared to last year. While showing the most growth among all of cable news, Maddow also topped CNN among regularly scheduled shows for the seventh straight year to finish as her most-watched year.

Maddow’s big year wasn’t limited to her own show. In February, the liberal media veteran co-moderated MSNBC’s Democratic debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. She also co-anchored all of MSNBC’s primary, convention, debate, and election night coverage.

“The Rachel Maddow Show” was in the thick of the wild political and news year that was 2016. Recent interviews with Sec. of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and with Donald Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway made news and Maddow was also instrumental in bringing attention to the Flint, MI water crisis.

Maddow finished as the most-watched cable news show of 2016 that is not on Fox News. Unfortunately for MSNBC, Fox News had the Top 11 programs and Maddow finished No. 12 overall. The most-watched CNN program of the year is “Anderson Cooper 360,” which finished seventeenth.

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