New Hampshire Barely Moves the Ratings Needle

Watching TV, it can sometimes seem as if the whole country is transfixed by the Republican presidential primary race. But then the TV ratings come in. While some of the Republican debates have drawn record-size audiences, viewers have mostly shrugged off the actual vote-counting. About 4.4 million people were tuned to one of the three main cable news channels — Fox News, CNN and MSNBC — on Jan 10 when Mitt Romney won the New Hampshire primary, only a million more than had watched one of the channels the prior night, according to the Nielsen Company.

CNN, which is normally behind Fox and MSNBC in prime time, was the biggest beneficiary, more than doubling its audience temporarily — though it still had only half as many viewers as Fox did. The increases for Fox, which leans right in prime time, and MSNBC, which leans left in prime time, were much smaller — they had just a couple hundred thousand more viewers than the prior night. The ratings suggest that political connoisseurs are captivated by the vote-tallying on TV this year, but casual viewers by and large are not.