Fox News, dreaming of past glories.

Rachel Maddow has the highest rated cable news show on television. This from PoliticusUSA:

On Wednesday night, MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show drew more viewers than every other primetime program to become the most watched broadcast on cable news. The Rachel Maddow Show drew 2.875 million total viewers on May 17, while Tucker Carlson was watched by 2.748 million viewers on Fox News. The rest of the MSNBC lineup was competitive or beat Fox News, with the exception of All In with Chris Hayes which lost to Carlson by nearly 700,000 viewers. Hardball with Chris Matthews also drew slightly more viewers than All In. The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell ran neck and neck with Sean Hannity as both shows drew more than 2.4 million viewers, and The 11th Hour continues to be a success for MSNBC as it defeated all competition in its 11 PM ET timeslot. After Bill O’Reilly had been fired from Fox News, it was only a matter of time until Maddow rose to the top spot as the most-watched show on cable news. Rachel Maddow has also benefitted from the Trump presidency as no journalist on cable news primetime is better equipped to handle the fact-free world of endless Trump scandals and lies than Maddow. Rachel Maddow appears to be the right voice at this particular time in American political history.

Apparently things are so bad over at Fox News that Tucker Carlson had to resort to discussing the state of the mens room at Penn Station with a guest, rather than deal with the Trump-Russia, Comey firing, all of that headache-y material. Read this funny story, also from PoliticusUSA and listen to the video.

And check out this article in Vulture where Maddow was interviewed in March and recently for an update:

We all look at the ratings, definitely. The whole staff gets them, and we all get them at the same time every day. I’d be lying if I said we didn’t pay attention. But I do find, psychologically, it’s not helpful to mix our news decisions and our focus on the content with our appreciation of whatever is happening in the ratings. You have to keep them as separate things in your mind. If you try to program your show or adjust your news judgment to chase ratings numbers, it never works, and it pollutes the process of putting together the best show every day. So, yeah, we pay attention. I mean, we’re in a business. We’re not working at a charity. And our job security, all of us on the show, depends to a certain extent on how well we are doing in the marketplace. So I won’t say we don’t pay attention, but I try really hard to compartmentalize that and focus on what we’re going to do that night on the show. We’re in a moment in American journalism where it makes sense to be both very proud and very protective of our press. If you are of the mind that this president, in his first 100 days in office, is facing one of the most serious potential national security scandals ever, with the Russia story, then support your local investigative journalists. We’ve got these investigations going on at the FBI and the congressional committees, more or less. But the other part of what’s going on in terms of figuring this out as a country is what’s happening in the fourth estate. And I feel like actually the press is doing a pretty good job. In some ways, it has given us, by far, the biggest piece of what we know.

It’s good to know that Tucker Carlson is starting to recede into the background and some actual journalism is getting higher ratings. It restores one’s faith in mankind.