Massachusetts Senate race makes Fox News a winner over USA

That Fox News scored a ratings victory usually wouldn’t be a surprise. The cable news channel has beaten CNN and MSNBC for the last eight years, and its margins over its rivals keep growing.

But last week, it managed to push past a competitor in another genre: USA, the powerhouse entertainment channel that has long held the spot as the top-ranked basic cable network in prime time.

The network was lifted by the huge audience that tuned in for its coverage of the special election to fill the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts, underscoring how Fox News is benefiting from the conservative populist movement gaining steam across the country. As independents and “tea party” activists helped propel Scott Brown to victory, Fox News drew 6 million viewers in prime time, its biggest audience since 2008’s election night.

Overall, during the week of Jan. 18, Fox News drew an average of 3.21 million viewers in prime time to USA’s 3.19 million. It’s a milestone the cable news channel has reached only a handful of times during major news events such as the war in Iraq or the 2008 presidential election.

The win was cheered by Fox News executives, who are gunning to capture the top ranking regularly.

“Look, I can’t make any predictions,” said Bill Shine, executive vice president for programming. “But it’s something we’re going to work toward.”

Top-ranked cable news host Bill O’Reilly drew 4.8 million viewers Thursday, beating three of NBC’s prime-time shows. And the channel’s newest star, Glenn Beck, who has emerged as an icon of the tea party movement, had his highest-rated week ever. On Jan. 22, Beck logged almost 4 million viewers, his biggest audience yet, for his “Live Free or Die” documentary that examined the roots of communism and socialism.

Shine said the current political climate “doesn’t hurt” but said the network’s burgeoning viewership was because “people trust us, and when news happens, they come to us.”

Last week’s busy news menu, dominated by the Massachusetts Senate race and the Haiti earthquake, lifted the channel’s daytime newscasts anchored by Bret Baier and Shepard Smith to their best ratings in recent years.

But in prime time, the network’s focus was on politics far more than Haiti. According to a news analysis by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, Fox News devoted 44% of its airtime to the Senate race and 16% to Haiti.

That was the case for MSNBC’s left-leaning prime-time commentators as well: The network spent 51% of its airtime on the Senate race and just 11% on Haiti. CNN chose the opposite route, devoting 67% of prime time to Haiti and 19% to the election.

“Look, what happened in Haiti was just horrific,” said Shine, who said the network devoted significant resources to covering the story and showcased the coverage throughout the day. “But there are also some big stories in America that we chose not to ignore the way that other networks seemed to.”

matea.gold@latimes.com