Fox News journalist Martha MacCallum’s sit-down interview with Court Nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh and his wife, Ashley Estes Kavanaugh, was the most-watched show on cable news last night, averaging 3.559 million total viewers.
With 610,000 adults ages 25-54 tuning in, Monday was the highest-rated episode ever of “The Story With Martha MacCallum.”
Last night’s “The Story” rose 86 percent in total viewers and 64 percent in the main demo compared to MacCallum’s third-quarter 2018 averages to date. The hour was third among all cable news programming among adults 25-54.
MacCallum finished well ahead of CNN’s “Erin Burnett Outfront” (916,000 total viewers; 323,000 25-54 demo) and MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” (1,803,000 total viewers; 304,000 25-54 demo) in the 7 p.m. PT hour.
Led by MacCallum’s show, Fox News also topped primetime outright in Nielsen averages, with Fox News grabbing 2.999 million total viewers to MSNBC’s 2.426 million and CNN’s 945,000.
Fox News also topped Monday in total-day averages.
Kavanaugh has strongly denied the sexual assault accusations made against him by former college classmate Deborah Ramirez and his original accuser, Palo Alto University psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford. Both Ford and Kavanaugh are expected to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
Ramirez told the New Yorker that Kavanaugh thrust his penis in her face without her consent while drunk at a party when they were both freshmen at Yale University. In her disclosure, Ramirez admitted that she had initially been unsure if the man in her memory of the event was Kavanaugh — something critics of the story have pounced on in recent days.
Ford has said that Kavanaugh drunkenly groped her, held her down against her will and tried to rape her when they were teenagers in suburban Washington, D.C.