TV News Ratings 2025 Second Quarter: Who Won & Who’s Lagging Behind?

The TV News ratings for the second quarter of 2025 are in, and ABC News continues to lead its competition on broadcast television, while Fox News remains dominant across cable.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, citing Nielsen ratings, ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir led the April-June period with an average of 7.37 million viewers each weeknight. This was a sizable lead over its competition, NBC Nightly News (5.79 million) and CBS Evening News (3.85 million).

World News Tonight also led the way in the key Adults 25-54 demographic with 1.01 million viewers. The show has maintained the lead in the 25-54 demo for every quarter since the January-March 2020 period.

Despite ABC News’ victory in the second quarter, the network’s numbers were down compared to the first three months of the year, as were those of both NBC and CBS. In the first quarter of 2025, ABC averaged 8.13 million viewers, NBC 6.6 million, and CBS 4.59 million.

NBC Nightly News has seen an uptick in viewers since Tom Llamas took over from veteran host Lester Holt. Per The Wrap, the show was up 7% year-over-year in the 25-54 demo compared to June 2024.

On cable, Fox News remained ahead of CNN and MSNBC in both total-day and primetime numbers, though its average was down slightly on the first quarter. Fox News averaged 1.63 million viewers for the day and 2.63 million in primetime for the second quarter, down from the 1.92 million (day) and 3.01 million (primetime) in the first quarter.

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MSNBC increased ever so slightly in its total day average, from 593,000 in the first quarter to 596,000 in the second quarter. The network’s primetime audience remained relatively the same, at 1.01 million viewers, compared to 1.02 million in the first quarter.

CNN was down slightly in both total-day and primetime, with an average of 406,000 total-day viewers and 538,000 in primetime for the second quarter, compared to 428,000 and 558,000 in the first quarter.

In the key 25-54 demo, Fox News averaged 202,000 viewers for the day and 304,000 in primetime, down slightly on the first quarter (247,000 and 380,000, respectively). MSNBC averaged 57,000 viewers for the day (even with Q1) and 91,000 in primetime (down a tick from 96,000). CNN, meanwhile, averaged 71,000 viewers for the day (down from 79,000) and 105,000 in primetime (down from 121,000).