Fox News holds its lead in cable news

New York

IN a year that featured a number of prominent news stories - a presidential campaign upended by Donald Trump, civic unrest in Baltimore, Pope Francis's visit to the US and deadly terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California - the number of people tuning in to the top 24-hour cable news channels went up, according to Nielsen.

Fox News once again dominated the competition in 2015, while CNN had significantly improved ratings and MSNBC had a slight bounce in viewers.

For the 14th consecutive year, Fox News led in total viewers and in the 25 to 54-year-old demographic crucial to advertisers. The network's average of 1.1 million viewers in prime time placed it second among all cable channels, the highest finish for a cable news channel ever. (ESPN came in first.) CNN had strong growth, with a total-day average of 490,000 viewers, representing its highest viewership in six years and a 23 per cent bump over the previous year. In the crucial 25-to-54 demographic it was up 18 per cent, and the network also had gains of better than 30 per cent in prime time in both total viewers and in the 25-to…