On the streaming front, NBC News Now delivered its best day on Election Day with over 100 million views. That was also the streaming platform’s most-watched week on record, while November was its best month on record and the best month ever on 11 streaming platforms.
Five of the streamer’s top 10 best months on record occurred in 2024, including July, August, September, October, and November. NBC News Now recorded its most-watched quarter in history in Q3 and the largest quarterly primetime audience on record.
MSNBC
On Nov. 5, more viewers chose to follow a presidential election on MSNBC over CNN for the first time in the network’s history.
Election Night saw MSNBC emerge as the No. 2 network across all of television in primetime, marking its best performance ever for a presidential election and its best performance of 2024. It pulled in 2.598 million total viewers and 648,000 demo viewers during total day, its most-watched day since Jan. 20, 2021. During primetime, MSNBC saw 6.009 million total viewers and 1.832 demo viewers for its most-watched night since Jan. 6, 2021.
MSNBC’s best performing week was the week of Aug. 19 during the Democratic National Convention when it became the most-watched network in primetime in all of television. During total day across that week, it saw 1.421 million total viewers and 197,000 demo viewers—its highest-rated week since the week of Feb. 8, 2021. In primetime, it attracted 3.367 million total viewers and 557,000 A25-54 viewers for its highest-rated week since Jan 4. 2021.
August proved to be the network’s best month was in August when it had 1.021 million total viewers and 121,000 demo viewers during total day, with 1.827 million viewers and 246,000 A25-54 viewers tuning in during primetime.
Vice President Harris’ speech on Aug. 22—the final night of the DNC—was the network’s most-watched news event of the year. Viewership peaked at 7.3 million viewers between 10:45 and 11:00 p.m., which stands as MSNBC’s most-watched moment since Jan. 6, 2021.
Turning to the network’s digital performance, its Election Day coverage had a record high for daily video starts on YouTube, and the “Kornacki Cam” was the biggest MSNBC YouTube livestream on record.
