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Fact check: How do CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC rank in terms of Hispanic and African American viewership in 2025?
Executive Summary
The available material shows Fox News commanding overall cable-news viewership in 3Q 2025 while MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow stands out as the lone non‑Fox program in the Top 15, but neither of the two supplied items contains direct, comparable demographic breakdowns for Hispanic and African American audiences across CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. Because the provided fact sheet documents declines at Spanish‑language networks (Univision and Telemundo) and the ratings brief lists overall program and demo numbers, a definitive ranking of CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC specifically by Hispanic and Black viewership in 2025 cannot be established from these two sources alone [1] [2].
1. What the ratings snapshot actually tells us about overall audience dominance
The 3Q 2025 cable-news ratings brief highlights a clear overall audience advantage for Fox News, noting that Fox occupied 14 of the Top 15 most-watched programs and that MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show was the sole non‑Fox entry, averaging 1.842 million total viewers and 176,000 demo viewers. That information establishes Fox’s strength in total viewers during that quarter, and it signals that Fox’s programming reached larger aggregate audiences than competitors in that period. The brief does not break those totals into Hispanic or African American viewership categories [1].
2. What the Hispanic and Black media fact sheet actually reports about Spanish‑language reach
The fact sheet focused on Hispanic and Black news media documents declines in evening audiences for the two largest Spanish‑language networks: Univision’s evening news fell by 11% and Telemundo’s by 9% in their average audiences. Those figures speak to trends in Spanish‑language television news consumption but do not provide a crosswalk to how English‑language cable-news channels such as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC perform among Hispanic or Black viewers. Consequently, the fact sheet confirms a broader shift in Spanish‑language network viewership without supplying direct comparative cable‑news demographic shares [2].
3. Why the provided data cannot produce a definitive Hispanic/Black ranking among the three cable networks
Neither source supplies the specific demographic breakdowns by race or ethnicity for CNN, Fox, and MSNBC that would be necessary to rank those networks among Hispanic and African American viewers in 2025. The ratings brief gives program totals and a single “demo” number for a show (which typically refers to adults 25–54), but that is not a race/ethnicity metric. The Spanish‑language fact sheet addresses Univision and Telemundo performance but does not measure spillover or relative audience share on English‑language cable networks. This gap prevents a supported ranking using only the supplied materials [1] [2].
4. Alternative inferences you can and cannot responsibly draw from the supplied materials
From the brief and the fact sheet one can responsibly state that Fox led in aggregate cable‑news viewership in 3Q 2025 and that Spanish‑language broadcast news audiences showed declines in the spring of 2025. One cannot responsibly assert that Fox, CNN, or MSNBC respectively rank first, second, or third specifically among Hispanic or Black viewers without supplemental demographic ratings or survey data. Any attempt to assign those demographic ranks would require additional, disaggregated audience data—Nielsen demographic breakdowns, validated survey samples, or network‑reported audience composition metrics [1] [2].
5. What types of additional data would allow a definitive ranking and where the supplied sources point the search
To produce a definitive 2025 ranking by Hispanic and African American viewership, one needs Nielsen or Comscore demographic splits for each network, or representative survey data that reports viewership by race/ethnicity and time slot. The ratings brief indicates where overall audience pressure points are (top programs and totals), while the fact sheet suggests parallel movement in Spanish‑language television. Bringing those threads together requires cross‑referencing network demographic panels or public network disclosures to measure the relative penetration of CNN, Fox, and MSNBC into Hispanic and Black viewership cohorts [1] [2].
6. Potential agendas and omissions visible in the two documents provided
The ratings brief emphasizes audience leadership and program‑level performance, which serves commercial and competitive narratives favorable to networks highlighting reach; it omits granular ethnic demographic breakdowns that would illuminate representational reach. The Hispanic/Black fact sheet foregrounds declines in Spanish‑language network audiences, which may support concerns about news access for Hispanic viewers but does not assess English‑language cable outlets’ performance among those communities. Both documents therefore risk overstating broad trends while omitting the specific demographic comparisons needed to answer the original question conclusively [1] [2].