Fox News coverage of Mueller testimony outpaces all cable and broadcast rivals

When it came to testimony TV, the competition could not keep up.

Fox News coverage of special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony before both the House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee bested all broadcast and cable news networks according to early data released by Nielsen Media Research on Thursday.

Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum were the key Fox News anchors for the event, which averaged 3 million viewers as the testimony continued through the day.

MSNBC drew 2.4 million while CNN attracted 1.5 million viewers.

The “Big Three” broadcast networks did not do much better when pitted against Fox News, which had a double-digit advantage over all three of them.

Fox News had a 43% advantage over ABC, which garnered 2.1 million viewers; a 59% over CBS with 1.8 million and a 52% advantage over NBC with 1.9 million.

Such victories are par for the course, though. Fox News has been the No. 1 cable network for 28 consecutive weeks, according to Nielsen, trumping such non-news competition as HGTV and ESPN.

Fox News also has dominated its news rivals CNN and MSNBC for 17 consecutive years.

Fox News drew 2.5 million primetime viewers last week, compared to 1.6 million for MSNBC, 1.2 million for HGTV, 1.2 million for the Hallmark Channel and 1.1 million for TBS, to round out the top-five. CNN was in eleventh place with 873,000 viewers.