Cable & Network News Growing

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MediaPost reports that Cable and Network News continues to grow...

President Donald Trump may like to trash the major TV news networks as “failing” and “fake news,” but the first year of his presidency has been a bonanza for their businesses, not just in terms of boosting their audience ratings during a breathtaking news year, but in terms of their bottom lines.

Advertisers increased their spending on television news programming 8.7% to $4.074 billion in 2017, according to an analysis of actual spending by the major ad agencies conducted for Research Intelligencer by Standard Media Index.

While all networks benefited, cable news networks grew their share relative to broadcast, and among cable news network programmers, the “Big 3” -- Fox News, CNN and MSNBC -- grew more than the others.

Each of the Big 3 picked up a share point of total cable network news revenues during 2017.

While Fox News continues to dominate in terms of total volume, accounting for 36 cents of every cable network news dollar spent in 2017, CNN and MSNBC grew at faster rates.

MSNBC was up 17.8%, while CNN grew 13.6% and Fox News increased 11.2%