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Fact check: Which US news outlets have seen the largest increase in viewership from 2024 to 2025?
Executive summary
The available analyses indicate two different winners depending on the metric: web-traffic data show the BBC and NBC News registering the largest year-over-year site visit growth in September 2025, while television ratings data show Fox News as the clear year-to-date and quarterly audience gainer in linear TV through 2025 [1] [2]. These findings highlight a split between digital audience expansion and cable-TV viewership gains; the data sets cover different behaviors and timeframes and should not be conflated when answering “which outlets saw the largest increase from 2024 to 2025.” [1] [2]
1. Digital surge: BBC and NBC News jump in US web traffic — what Similarweb shows
Similarweb’s September 2025 snapshot reports the BBC up 19% year-on-year and NBC News up 5% year-on-year among the ten largest U.S. news sites, with monthly spikes of 27% and 54% respectively, placing the BBC at 118.6 million U.S. visits and NBC News at 96.6 million in that month [1]. These figures measure site visits rather than unique-TV viewers or cross-platform audiences and capture short-term traffic dynamics that can be driven by breaking stories, platform distribution changes, or search trends; the data explicitly frame the increases in terms of monthly and annual traffic growth, not traditional Nielsen-style TV ratings [1].
2. Cable TV dominance: Fox News wins the audience growth race in 2025
Cable ratings summaries for 2025 show Fox News leading in total-day and primetime viewership, with double-digit total-day growth and dominance of the top-rated programs, including 2.483–2.541 million primetime viewers in September and strong quarterly totals that outpaced CNN and MSNBC [2] [3] [4]. The cable data specifically note a 13% increase in total day viewers year to date for Fox and describe Fox’s hold on the top-rated programs in Q3 2025, which contrasts with CNN and MSNBC seeing declines or lower totals in comparable periods [2] [5] [3].
3. Why web traffic winners and TV winners differ — measurement and audience behavior
The analyses make clear that web traffic and television viewership are fundamentally different metrics: Similarweb counts visits to websites (capturing mobile and desktop engagement), while Nielsen-style cable ratings count persons watching live TV during measured periods [1] [2]. A publisher can see large digital growth without corresponding linear-TV gains, and cable channels can gain TV viewers even if their websites lose share. Therefore, the “largest increase” depends entirely on whether the question targets site visits (digital) or linear TV viewers (broadcast/cable) [1] [2].
4. Mixed signals inside platform categories — winners and losers among top sites and channels
Within web rankings, The New York Times remained the largest U.S. news site while MSN experienced significant year-on-year declines (MSN down 38%), showing that growth is uneven across outlets and that a handful of large brands still dominate absolute traffic [1]. On cable, Fox’s primetime totals near 2.5 million contrast with CNN and MSNBC at the mid-hundred-thousand range, illustrating concentration of TV audiences and the potential for a single network to drive most of the year-over-year gains reported in linear metrics [3] [4] [1].
5. Timing and scope matter — September snapshots versus full-year or quarter measures
The Similarweb data cited are September 2025 month-on-month and year-on-year figures, providing a snapshot of digital momentum rather than a full-year comparison, whereas the cable ratings referenced include quarterly and year-to-date summaries for 2025 that emphasize sustained TV audience shifts [1] [2] [3]. This difference in time window explains part of the apparent discrepancy: a site can spike in a particular month, while TV networks may show steadier quarter-to-quarter trends; the two approaches answer complementary but distinct questions about audience change [1] [2].
6. What the reports omit — cross-platform reach, demographics, and causation
The supplied analyses do not provide consistent cross-platform audience tallies, demographic breakdowns beyond basic demos, or causal explanations for growth (such as editorial events, platform deals, or algorithm changes). For example, cable reports list Adults 25–54 figures but do not reconcile those with total-day digital reach, and Similarweb reports lack TV equivalency measures; these omissions mean comparisons across formats require careful qualification and cannot definitively show a single “largest increase” across all audience channels [1] [2] [3].
7. Bottom line for the original question — answer by metric, not by outlet alone
If the question is interpreted as digital traffic growth from 2024 to 2025, the data point to the BBC and NBC News as the largest year-on-year gainers in September 2025 [1]. If the question targets television viewership growth, the cable ratings show Fox News as the principal audience gainer through 2025, leading primetime and total-day increases [2] [3]. Any definitive statement must specify the metric—site visits versus TV viewers—and the timeframe—monthly snapshot versus quarter or year-to-date—to avoid conflating distinct forms of audience growth [1] [2].