Fox News tops ratings for coverage on Jan. 6 anniversary events

Fox News topped ratings for coverage of the anniversary events for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot on Thursday, beating competitors such as CNN and MSNBC.

Throughout the day, Fox News averaged 1.6 million viewers as cable news highlighted the one-year anniversary of supporters of former President Trump storming the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of President Biden’s electoral win, according to early Nielsen Media research. 

Fox News was the top-rated cable news network during coverage of Biden’s and Vice President Harris’s speeches commemorating Jan. 6, with 1.6 million viewers. 

Fox News shows featuring interviews with members of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot were also viewed by millions.

Select Committee Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-Wy.) interview with Fox News host Bret Baier saw 2.5 million viewers.

Neil Cavuto interviewed another Jan. 6 committee member, Rep. Adam Kingziner (R-Ill.), and garnered 1.5 million viewers. 

The Jan. 6 committee has discovered in its investigation that multiple Fox News hosts attempted to urge the president to call off his supporters during the Capitol riot. 

Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade all messaged former chief of staff Mark Meadows to convince him to have Trump urge his supporters to leave the Capitol.

Some Fox News hosts including Ingraham and Tucker Carlson later tried to push conspiracies about the riot. Ingraham suggested that members of the far-left antifa movement had infiltrated the mob, NBC News reported at the time. She later shared an article noting that a viral story claiming members of antifa had been identified in the crowd was false.

Data from Nielsen Media showed that CNN did not hit 1.5 million viewers at any hour in the day on Jan. 6. Fox News led CNN and MSNBC in prime time with an average of more than 2.8 million viewers.

Updated: Jan. 10 at 11:55 a.m. with additional information.