If you thought 28K AJ viewers during daytime was bad, imagine MSNBC at exactly half or 14K viewers. While I don't think you're intentionally cherry-picking num

If you thought 28K AJ viewers during daytime was bad, imagine MSNBC at exactly half or 14K viewers. While I don't think you're intentionally cherry-picking numbers here, I'm fairly sure you're quoting a Mediaite article about AJAM beating MSNBC during the 2PM newscast in mid-2015. Those are not total viewership numbers. If you want to compare cable news networks, it'd be better to compare their primetime viewerships. AJAM had trouble breaking 30K in primetime, according to the NYT, but at least as of August 2015 (the most recent data I can find), MSNBC's primetime total viewership was 639K -- actually beating CNN slightly. As for "almost no one watches cable news," well: yes, but. Given how much of the HN discussion is centering around cord cutting, it's worth considering how many people get their news from the web sites of CNN and friends. In January 2015, for instance, cnn.com had over 64M unique visitors; foxnews.com had about 55M, while nbcnews.com had about 30M -- even though NBC News has far more viewers than CNN (nearly 10M compared to CNN's under 1M). Sources: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/al-jazeera-america-beat-msnbc-for-2-hours-in-the-key-25-54-ratings-demo/ http://www.mediaite.com/tv/al-jazeera-america-beat-msnbc-for... http://www.mediaite.com/tv/august-2015-ratings-fox-news-1-in-all-primetime-cable-msnbc-last-in-demo/ http://www.mediaite.com/tv/august-2015-ratings-fox-news-1-in... http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/business/media/al-jazeera-america-to-shut-down-in-april.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/business/media/al-jazeera-... http://www.journalism.org/2015/04/29/cable-news-fact-sheet/ http://www.journalism.org/2015/04/29/cable-news-fact-sheet/ http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/abc-david-muir-nbc-lester-holt-evening-news-ratings-1201677863/ http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/abc-david-muir-nbc-lester-ho...