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With Trump promoting @OANN again this week, I went looking for ratings data. How many people besides the president are watching? OANN doesn't subscribe to Nielsen, the industry standard. But it turns out that Nielsen IS measuring the channel...
Nielsen has #'s for OANN in "metered markets," i.e. the country's biggest metro areas. This spring, in those markets, OANN has been averaging just 14,000 viewers. Fox News: 631,000 viewers in those same markets.
In the final #'s, with all the smaller markets, Fox's average audience roughly doubles. So even if we're being generous to OANN– let's say its total audience is triple the metered market #'s– the channel is not filling a football stadium. Fox, CNN, MSNBC all exponentially bigger.
Competition is a good thing. But so is data. OANN's W.H. correspondent told me Nielsen ratings are "fake." Well, the ratings are not perfect, but they're the industry standard, the foundation for billions in ad sales. And Trump loves ratings. But he also likes cherry-picking...
Last month Trump tweeted about a "big ratings jump" at OANN. The channel clearly doesn't have big ratings. But OANN execs have shared ComScore #'s with the White House that tell a growth story. First outlet Trump called on at his most recent presser? OANN. /end
