Sean Hannity’s Ratings Spike on Fox News With Teased Seth Rich Announcement

Sean Hannity saw a massive spike in his ratings thanks to the Fox News host teasing a major announcement regarding the case of slain DNC staffer Seth Rich and the anchor’s future at the cable news network on Tuesday night.

According to Nielsen data, Hannity averaged 2.45 million total viewers with 565,000 in the key adults 25-54 demographic at 10 p.m. Compared to the comparable night from 2016, that is an increase of 50% in total viewers and a 68% rise in the demo. Overall, Fox News was number one in the demo for the total day, as well as in total viewers in both primetime and total day. However, MSNBC was number one in the demo in primetime with 547,000 viewers to Fox’s second place 541,000.

Hannity had been pushing forward with the story that Rich, who was murdered in Washington D.C. in July, was targeted in retaliation for the leak of internal DNC documents to Wikileaks. Fox News retracted a story regarding the Rich theory on Tuesday, which has not been supported by any credible evidence. However, Hannity said he would not retract any of his statements regarding the Rich case. “All of you in the liberal media: I am not Fox.com or FoxNews.com. I retracted nothing,” he said on his Tuesday radio show. Before the Tuesday airing of his show on Fox News, he tweeted the following statement: “Huge announcement tonight about Seth Rich, Trump/Russian Collusion corrupt media, the liberal effort to silence me. And my future at Fox!”

During the show, Hannity said, “Out of respect for the family’s wishes, for now, I am not discussing the matter at this time.” He went on to assure viewers that he has no intention of leaving Fox News, where he is believed to be working under a contract that expires in 2020.

Get more from Variety and Variety411: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter