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2015 Q2 Ratings Report: ABC, Fox News on top; MSNBC struggles as CNN makes gains

ABC's "World News" won the broadcast news ratings race for the second quarter of 2015, while Fox News topped in cable and, more notably, was the third most-watched cable channel period in primetime, our review of the Q2 Nielsen ratings shows.

ABC's nightly news broadcast drew an average of 7.853 million total veiwers and 1.902 million viewers in the demo. NBC's "Nightly News’” was a close second with 7.81 million total viewers and 1.829 million in the demo. In Lester Holt's first week as the formal host of Nightly, the show topped ABC, pulling in 8.048 million total and 1.97 million in the demo, compared to ABC's 7.722 million and 1.933 million, respectively.

Fox News continued to easily dominate the cable news landscape, and came in third overall among all cable channels behind TBS and TNT. The network also continued to hold the top 14 most-viewed cable news shows and dominated the demo ratings, holding all but two top-ten spots. CNN’s “CNN Tonight” and “Anderson Cooper 360” took the number seven and number nine spots in the demos, respectively.

Though “The O’Reilly Factor” held onto its number one spot in primetime for the quarter -- with 2.456 million viewers and 423,000 viewers -- “The Kelly File” was number one in the demo for June, the month in which she had a blockbuster interview with the Duggar family, beating out O’Reilly with 400,000 demo viewers compared to O’Reilly’s 397,000.

Generally, Fox News dominated primetime with 1.64 million viewers compared to CNN’s 576,000 and MSNBC’s 525,000, though CNN saw a 20-percent percent increase in primetime viewership -- the largest jump for any of the networks. In the primetime demo, Fox News held the number one spot (and a 14 percent increase) with 311,000 viewers, followed by CNN’s 204,000 and MSNBC’s 136,000.

The morning news shows saw decreases in viewership across the board, especially in the demo. “Fox & Friends” had its lowest performance in the demo since August 2001 and its lowest performance in total viewers since 2010 (though it still easily outpaces the other morning shows). “Fox & Friends” had 942,000 total viewers for the quarter and 210,000 viewers in the demo, while “Morning Joe” had 362,000 total viewers and just 79,000 viewers in the demo. “New Day” had 329,000 total viewers for the quarter and 110,000 demo viewers.

Fox won the total day viewership with 980,000 viewers, followed by CNN with 433,000 and MSNBC with 321,000 -- though CNN also saw a 26 percent increase in total day viewers, also the largest jump for any of the cable nets.

Meanwhile, MSNBC continues to struggle with its ratings, as viewership declined 17 percent in the total day demo. MSNBC currently sits in fourth-place in the demo for total day with just 86,000 viewers, behind CNN sister network HLN.

Hadas Gold is a reporter at Politico.