It turns out the Trump Shutdown didn’t just hurt government workers and those who rely on them and their services, it also had a nasty effect on Fox News’ ratings. MSNBC, on the other hand, had a ratings surge.

TVNewser reported on the January, 2019 ratings today:

MSNBC was No. 1 in total viewers during the 9 p.m., 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. timeslots, anchored by Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell and Brian Williams, respectively.

The Rachel Maddow Show was the No. 1 cable news program for the month of January across all relevant categories. TRMS averaged 3.29 million total viewers for the month, which is the largest total viewer delivery for a 9 p.m. show in the history of the network.… The Last Word and The 11th Hour also set total audience records for a month.

In other words, not only did each MSNBC show in the 9-11 PM hours beat its Fox News competition, and set records doing so, but The Rachel Maddow show topped them all, plus Tucker Carlson Tonight.

Don’t cry for Fox News just yet. They’re still the most-watched cable news network overall. But the Trump Network has got to be at least somewhat worried. In addition to everything else, it posted the most significant year-over-year ratings losses of the three cable news networks.

As Eric Boehlert noted, the shutdown has been particularly bad for Sean Hannity’s ratings:

Coming off a robust 2018 where he logged the top spot on cable news, Hannity averaged 3.3 million viewers last year. So far this year though, he’s averaging 2.7 million, which means he lost nearly one-quarter of his audience during the government shutdown. ...

And on some recent nights [Maddow's] margin of victory has been much larger than 500,000 viewers. For instance, on Jan. 3, 4, and 7 of this year, Maddow defeated Hannity by 1 million viewers each night.

If Hannity and his Trumper colleagues stop cheerleading for another government shutdown it may have everything to do with their own pocketbooks and nothing to do with principle or politics.

(Hannity image via screen grab.)