Weekly Cable Ratings: ESPN Opens New Year on Top of Primetime, Total Day Charts

ESPN rang in the New Year with a pair of College Football Playoff games that helped the sports network top both the primetime and total day charts for the first week of 2024.

ESPN averaged 4.9 million viewers during the week of January 1-7 to easily beat second-place Fox News Channel, which averaged 1.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen numbers supplied by Fox News. The network was bolstered by its Alabama-Michigan and Washington-Texas CFP semifinal games, which drew 22 million and 17.6 million viewers, respectively.

HGTV finished third for the week with 918,000 viewers, followed by MSNBC with 881,000 viewers, and Hallmark Channel with 848,000 watchers. History pulled into sixth place with 768,000 viewers, followed by Discovery Channel (669,000 viewers), TBS (663,000), TLC (646,000) and INSP (616,000).

ESPN was the most watched network on a total day basis, averaging 1.9 million viewers, followed by Fox News (1.1 million viewers), MSNBC (671,000), HGTV (485,000), and CNN (462,000), according to Nielsen.